


Isolation

by RobertSaysThis



Series: Doctor Who: To Your Beginning [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adventure, Angst, COVID-19, Canon-welding, Coronavirus, Depressed Doctor, Gen, Isolation, Omega is played by Paterson Joseph, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Retcon, Thasmin vibes, The Ergon is not, dark doctor, present day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 22,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23279878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobertSaysThis/pseuds/RobertSaysThis
Summary: Planet Earth is entering isolation, but something is hunting the Doctor. A creature trapped for a billion years, dripping red in a plaster husk.And there’s someone else in isolation, too. Someone the Time Lords wronged, a long, long time ago. Perhaps the Doctor’s equal, and her opposite. The only one who’s left who can help her now.Matter and Antimatter. The first and the last. The Timeless Child, and the man who once conquered time.The Alpha and the Omega.
Relationships: The Doctor & Omega, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan
Series: Doctor Who: To Your Beginning [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1889194
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

The cloth man was already there in the morning, when the first of the cleaners came in. Some of the police station kept working through the night, but not this bit— it was dark as the sky outside when the first of the strip lights flicked on. The whole place would be like this soon, the cleaner thought. Even the police couldn’t function well in a pandemic.

He liked his jokes, the cleaner, so he wasn’t alarmed when he saw it. He laughed with the figure as it stood there, yellow-white in the middle of the office. Like it wasn’t odd to find it there at all; silent and alone in a place with the lights off— and in something like a full-body plaster cast, like a human husk formed out of paper maché. No, the cleaner went up to that figure like he thought it was really a person, said at least now he knew who’d been buying up all of the toilet paper! And the figure said nothing in response to him, and after that the cleaner was less full of smiles.

You saw people like this in the movies, he thought. Mentalists. The people who’d gone mad enough that nurses strapped them down. Maybe this one had escaped and come down to a police station. Thought their thoughts were being listened into, like the police cared what anyone would think.

The figure towered over him, silent. Like a statue that wasn’t alive. And if he’d known much more about aliens the cleaner would have run for it, then. He’d have known how many people had died in a place just like this, killed by something so strange and stupid you wouldn’t ever think it was deadly. But he was lucky as well as ignorant, at least. The figure wasn’t looking for his blood.

The cloth man stood unmoving in a silence. The cleaner stared at its face, hard as a grave.

The water in his bucket felt like it was getting cold.

“Right,” said the cleaner. “If we’re not going to bother each other. Live and let live, eh? At a time like this.”

The cloth man was silent, which presumably meant it agreed. He cleaned around it as best he could, wiped down everywhere the virus could be. Then he cleaned the rest of the office just the same, and when he left he put the strange figure out of his mind. There had been so much to try and ignore this last week, after all. What was one plaster man, compared to that?

When the first of the police officers came in they joked with the figure, too. Laughed at it as if it was slightly unusual, because they didn’t know how to deal with anything more. And they spoke to it and it didn’t respond, and it kept not responding when the laughs faded into aggression. And in the end they put it in the cells, and hoped that if they did it might go away. Like so many problems, nowadays. Like the virus might, if everyone hoped just enough.

And so it was hope that didn’t tell Yasmin Khan what was coming for her, as she sat down at her desk on that day at the start of spring.


	2. Chapter 2

When do you call for the Doctor?

It was a question that bothered Yaz a lot, beneath the surface. Take that one time, not long after they’d started travelling. A case that she couldn’t solve; not a big one. They couldn’t prove a suspect had been on Cemetery Road on a Sunday— but _she_ would be able to, wouldn’t she? Yaz with the phone camera, the Doctor with the space and time machine. A quick snap; evidence; it’d be all you’d need. What was the point of a Police Box if you never got to do any policing?

The Doctor had said no, of course. There was a line, she’d said, between Yaz stuff and Doctor stuff, and policework was firmly on Side Yaz. To get the TARDIS involved things had to be weirder; _alien_. Big blue pods you’d find on a leaf-strewn lane; spies from a place not even a part of the universe. Daleks. Giant Spiders. Nothing dull. The Line, she’d shouted. Clear as day.

Except it wasn’t, thought Yaz, not at all.

Take the virus. The Doctor had never mentioned it, not once. She’d talked about armies of sheep and planets that tasted like orange, but she’d never once gabbed on about _Pandemic, 2020_. “Nice travelling with ya! Watch out for the virus!” was something she hadn’t said, and maybe that meant it shouldn’t’ve happened? That it was something wrong with time, or even alien? It felt wrong thinking that, seeing as it came out of China. Like it might be a little bit racist.

And the man in the cells, too, his whole body bound up in cloth. When Yaz had heard about him she’d been furious: no procedures followed, no concern that he’d found his way to the heart of the Hallamshire Police. Everyone had looked back at her, glazed. They didn’t know how to cope with anything out of the ordinary. And she thought she’d behave differently, with all she’d seen, but maybe even doing that was wrong? Maybe it was just a man. You didn’t have to be alien to wrap yourself up in a sheet.

She looked at her phone yet again, scrolled down to the Doctor’s number. _“Aliens!”_ , she might then say, once Yaz had said all that had happened. Somehow it’d all be fine if aliens was all it was.

Her emergency meeting had been cancelled for a more important emergency meeting. Everyone in the office packed into a tiny room; police and not-police and some people she didn’t even recognise. Even the Force couldn’t keep up at full capacity, the Head of HR was saying. Some of them wouldn’t be on the streets, not like they would’ve been used to. They’d do office stuff from home; paperwork. God knows there was more of it than they would’ve liked to admit. Yaz felt a chill as she thought of all the sick leave she’d taken. Could they use that against her? Would doing that even be legal?

Before she knew what was happening it was some hours later, and she was still turning it round in her head. The junior police officers were being called into a room, one after another. It was always harder when you were junior; you knew you were the first who’d be let go.

Her name was being called, she realised very distantly. Her mind felt herself walking into her supervisor’s office. Mike Tomkins. He did things by the book, and didn’t like it if it looked like that book would change. She’d always suspected he didn’t like her, and before she’d even sat down she knew what he was going to say.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’ll be essential staff only.”

Yaz glared at him, trying to look fierce.

“Who chooses essential?” she said. “I can be essential. Look at my case record.”

“We did,” said Mike. “And it wasn’t bad, Yaz, it really wasn’t. But it’s not about the figures, at the end of the day. It’s grit. Strength of character. And if I’m being honest, love— you often fade into the background.”

 _You have no idea what I’ve been through to get here_ , Yaz thought but didn’t say. There were a lot of things that she only ever said in her mind.

She thought of the Doctor, standing against the tide. Screwdriver out, willing herself to be strong.

“What if I got rid of the man?” she said.

Mike stared back at her like he’d been insulted. “The man?” he said.

“That bloke who’s covered in cloth who we’re all ignoring. In the overnight cells. You know we’ll have to move him before it all goes into lockdown. Maybe I can take care of that.”

Mike laughed. “No one’s been able to yes.”

“‘Course they haven’t,” said Yaz. “‘If they had then I wouldn’t be offering.”

She shrugged.

“It’s not like you have anything to lose,” she said.

Mike met her eyes for maybe the first time ever, and when he next spoke his voice was softer.

“You’re a police officer,” he said gently. “Not a miracle worker.”

“No,” said Yaz. “But maybe miracles are what we need at the minute, right?”

Mike was silent, and the whole of his office was too.

“Aye,” he said after a moment. “Maybe. Go on then, love. You get the madman out of here; I’ll pull some strings. But you have to do it now, yeah? This isn’t a decision that can wait.”

One chance before certain disaster, Yaz thought to herself. She’d been here before, many times.

You’d think that might mean she’d be able to be far less terrified.


	3. Chapter 3

The Cloth Man was kept in a holding cell of his own. Out of the way, so people might forget about him. Protocol was he shouldn’t have been here this long; especially not when no one even knowing his name. But protocol had gone out the window these last few days, at the time that it should have mattered most.

The Man turned very slightly as Yaz entered into his cell. Subtly, just enough to show that he knew she was there. Still silent, of course, unspeaking. But clearly and definitively alive.

Tentatively Yaz walked over beside him, as close as she thought she could get. She was good at the soft stuff, they said. Great at being Good Cop, no need to talk about the Bad. She’d bet everything that the Cloth Man wouldn’t turn out to be violent. She didn’t have much of a plan if she was wrong.

“I know you can hear me,” she said, very gently. The Cloth Man looked at her like a mannequin might, like a body that wasn’t even dead. Yaz felt an involuntary shiver rising in her, but suppressed it. _Always listen, never judge._ There was comfort in rules, when they made sense like that.

“You can talk to me, yeah?” she said to the figure, looking right into the eyes he didn’t have. “It’s not like you’re going to be in trouble. As little trouble as we can make it, at least. It’s something we have to take seriously, breaking into a police station in the middle of the night.”

_“Pause for just a little bit too long,”_ the coach in her head was saying. _“Lower your voice, but not so much that they’ll ever notice. You want them to believe that you could be their friend. And maybe for a moment you want to believe that, too.”_

“You did break in, right?” said Yaz, conspiratorially. His head still directed at hers, the Cloth Man continued not to speak.

__

_“Silence isn’t always bad when you’re met with it. Work with it, stay in control. More often than not, you’re close to a new way in.”_

“I know that you might not be human,” she said, risking everything. “And that’s okay. I know someone who can help. Helping’s what she does; it’s what she’s good at. But she’ll only come if you tell me what you are.”

The figure didn’t respond— or didn’t seem to, not at first. But then there was a sound like a knife thrusting out through thick cardboard, then after that the dreadful dribble of liquid. Yaz watched, hesitating, as a firm red goo began to flow from the fingers of the Cloth Man. It wasn’t blood – wrong consistency, wrong colour – but to a civilian it might as well have been. And it was rising up from the figure’s bound-up hands because… because…

...because claws like metal blades had punched out from under the cloth, gleaming as the red drained from underneath.

_“So there’s a weapon,”_ Yaz willed the voice of her coach to keep saying. _“That doesn’t have to mean it’s ever used. Stay in control of the situation. If you act like nothing can go wrong, then maybe – if you’re lucky – nothing will.”_

She stared at him and pretended that she could be confident.

“Be careful, yeah?” she said. “You don’t have to do anything stupid.”

He could kill her without trying, she knew. A single swipe to almost anywhere would do it. A human body is nothing, the Doctor had said. People had no idea how fragile they really were.

But the Cloth Man wasn’t moving to kill her. He was barely even moving at all. Just his head, right up so it almost touched hers. Close enough that she could have felt his breath, if he’d had any breath to feel at all—

_“What is this?”_ he suddenly hissed, quickly and though he was angry.

“It’s a cell,” Yaz said, as calmly as she could. “You’re in Sheffield. On the Earth.”

Maybe the Cloth Man knew what that meant, and maybe he didn’t. Either way, he gave no response to her words. His head turned away and his body went slack, and once again he barely seemed living at all.

Yaz was quiet until the silence grew longer than even her coach would have said was professional. 

“Okay,” she said to herself. “Looks like I’ll be working from home.”

She locked the cell door behind her as tightly as she could, trying not to look at the red stain like wax on the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

A week passed that seemed longer than a year. Then there was another week, and that was even longer. Yaz had finished her paperwork by the first hour of the first day, and after that hardly anything seemed to come in. There were only so many crimes people could do without leaving their house, and most of those were too serious for a junior policewoman to be involved.

She watched a lot of cat videos. She made four TikToks that didn’t get four likes. People on social media told her it was amazing doing what she was doing in a crisis, and then she felt guilty as well as bored.

Time passed slowly, reluctantly, in a way the Doctor could never understand.

Often Yaz wondered what had happened to the Cloth Man when they had closed the station. When she joined the force she’d had faith they’d have known what to do— but experience had told her they’d panic in situations less novel than this. Had they put him into prison? Thrown him out on the street? She couldn’t think of anywhere that a silent, bandaged figure could fit in.

The virus now always haunted Yaz’s dreams, but on the last night the Cloth Man did as well. An NHS ward with nurses gathered round a bed; all of them screaming for a doctor. But the doctor wasn’t coming, wouldn’t arrive: there was only Yaz and she was powerless to help. Silly, really. She’d devoted her life to helping in a way that was useless here.

And the man on the bed clearly needed help – he was entirely covered in bandages – and as she watched, paralysed, he lunged towards her with a screech, the metal glinting hungry from both of his outstretched claws—

—she woke up with a start. Breathless. Drenched in sweat. It had only been a dream; nothing more. Anyone would go a bit funny, cooped up in their house for quite this long.

She tried to calm herself by looking round the normality of her room. Posters from gigs she’d been to long ago. Cuddly bears she liked more than she would admit—

—a man bound entirely in cloth, leaning silently against her door.

_“What is this?”_ it screeched at her once again. _“What is this?”_

Yaz screamed, too scared to even be embarrassed about it. She scrabbled for her phone, for the number she’d only ever call in real emergencies.

_“What is this?”_ hissed the figure once again. He’d extended one of his long, sharp claws, drawing it to his sternum until it ground into his chest. And as Yaz hammered at her he’d begun to carve, a single metal nail slicing through the cloth into whatever lay underneath. A big half circle to where his belly button should have been, then a long downwards line scraped under that. A question mark, drawn on his body. Gleaming red.

_“WHAT IS THIS?”_ the figure howled once again.

“Doctor!” cried Yaz as her phone began to ring. _“DOCTOR!”_

“Yaz!” said an inappropriately cheery voice on the end of the phone. “Funny you should call. I’ve just been responding to a really big distress signal; hope it’s not you who’s been distressed.”

“There’s a man in my room,” said Yaz, ignoring her.

Instantly, the Doctor’s tone changed.

“Right,” she said. “Have you called the police?”

“It’s Doctor stuff!” said Yaz. “He’s covered completely in cloth; there’s a big question mark on his body”—

She hadn’t even finished the sentence before her room was filled with an unearthly wheezing sound, like the wind itself had been infected with Covid-19. The Cloth Man didn’t even turn as a Police Box formed out of the air— materialising in a space it could barely fit, blasting some casual clothes out of the way.

The Doctor burst out of the box’s doors, sonic screwdriver already outstretched in her arm.

“A Watcher!” she bellowed. “Love me a Watcher! That’s a lie, you’re terrifying.”

She nodded over to her friend very slightly, as a greeting.

“Yaz,” she said. “Get back. I’m about to do something clever.”

Yaz stretched into the back wall of the bedroom as the Doctor sized up the man she had called a _Watcher_ , delicately pointing her screwdriver right at his chest.

“Okay,” she said. “Here goes.”

Then in a single movement she turned to grab Yaz’s hand, barrelling her as fast as she could towards the TARDIS doors.

“Get in!” she shouted. “Run!” And then Yaz was in a space that was too big to be in her bedroom and the Doctor was slamming something shut, and the last thing she saw of her home was the man in cloth staring straight towards her.

“Welcome in,” said the Doctor. “Afraid I wasn’t expecting visitors. It isn’t very clean.”

Yaz looked around at the console room, which looked exactly the same as it always did. She took a deep breath, then a big sigh.

And then she started laughing, suddenly and uncontrollably.

“What?” said the Doctor. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s nothing!” laughed Yaz. “Only. It’s been such a mad fortnight that this”—

She laughed again.

—“this is the first time that things’ve felt normal,” she said.


	5. Chapter 5

It was some time later, and the two of them sat round the warm light of the TARDIS console. The Doctor had made Yaz some herbal tea to calm her down, and Yaz was so shaken she didn’t even care that it was disgusting.

“Who was that man?” Yaz said once she’d calmed down enough. “What’s a Watcher?”

“Shouldn’t call it that,” said the Doctor. “It’s only a nickname. My people” – she hesitated – “the people I thought I had. When they wanted something, wanted it really bad. They could take their desire and make it a living thing. It’s called an _Ergon_. A bit like in Aristotle.”

“If you say so,” said Yaz.

“He got it from us,” the Doctor went on. “But that man in your room’s like an Ergon I made once before. When I was very scared, knew that I’d soon be dying. My friends called it _The Watcher_ , but an Ergon’s what it always was.”

“So it wasn’t just a guy in some rags,” said Yaz. “I didn’t know if it was even an alien. If I should’ve called you.”

“Oh, definitely,” said her friend. “A man made of pure will with a question mark carved on his belly? We’re talking properly Doctor.”

Yaz hesitated, then asked it before she could stop.

“Should I have called you about the virus, too?” she said.

“The virus?” said the Doctor, frowning with all of her face. Then she almost physically recoiled, clapping her hand to her mouth.

“The virus!” she gasped, grabbing Yaz’s hand in hers. “Twenty twenty! Corona! Whole of the Earth shutting down!”

Yaz looked at her, uncertainly.

“Did you… _forget?_ ” she said.

“Wouldn’t say forgot,” said the Doctor. “Misplaced the facts. There are a lot of them, aren’t there? Facts. Three species of elephant still around when you were born. The Impossible Void is as large as a level five universe. The Coronavirus happened in”—

She looked away, not able to meet Yaz’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am.”

Yaz knew she’d regret the next question, too.

“Can you stop it?” she said. “Make it so it never happens?”

The Doctor looked back at her, helplessly.

“It’s a massive event, Yaz,” she said. “It changes Earth’s history.”

“For better or worse?” said Yaz.

“You know that’s not why I can’t stop it,” said the Doctor.

Something cracked in Yaz, despite herself.

“Great,” she said. “So you couldn’t save Prem and now you can’t save my Nan.”

The Doctor looked horrified. “Your Nan’s sick?”

“She could be! Anyone could get it, right? Even Graham’s getting old. He’s a cancer survivor. That might mean he wouldn’t get a ventilator”—

Yaz stopped herself before she got properly angry.

“You’re not a part of all this,” she said. “You’re not stuck in it. You don’t know.”

“That’s why I’m dealing with the things I am a part of,” said the Doctor. “That Ergon is mine. I felt it somewhere, out there in the universe. Screaming to me, along with all that distress. And I need to do something about it, ‘cos, well”—

She blushed, very slightly.

—“I’m afraid that it might be hatching,” she said.

“The Cloth Man is hatching,” said Yaz flatly.

“Well, I know it’s weird, Yaz! I don’t have a road map for this. And that means – very regrettably – I need to meet a man who knows a bit about Ergons.”

“If I have this straight,” said Yaz. “Then your Ergon’s something you want, yeah? Really badly.”

“That’s him,” said the Doctor without joy.

“Well… you never said what that actually was,” said Yaz.

“No,” said the Doctor. “I didn’t. It’s enough for you to know that I need to stop it. And that the man I need to meet— he’s insane. But he’s the only hope I’ve got.”

There was something very familiar about that, Yaz thought to herself.

“You know,” said the Doctor. “You don’t have to come this time, Yaz. It’ll all get pretty hairy. And it’ll be just you and me.”

“I want to come,” said Yaz. “I’ve been stuck in my flat for ages. I’m going mad.”

“Bored’s better than dead,” said the Doctor. “Omega’s more dangerous than anything you’ve seen before. Except my Ergon.” She laughed. “And maybe me. Omega… he’s endless anger bubbling beneath the surface. And that’s not the only thing we’ve got in common.”

Yaz looked at the Doctor, at the mirthlessness in her eyes. Her friend still tried so hard to be a beacon of hope, even when everything she’d known had been a lie. She suddenly thought of a lighthouse keeper long ago, sleepless and broken by waves, who kept going despite the darkness because otherwise nobody could.

“I’m staying,” said Yaz. “Not just for me, yeah?”

She smiled, warmly and weakly. The Doctor’s shell cracked, just for a moment. A movement of her eyes and in her posture. One second where it wasn’t her tending the light.

“Alright,” said the Doctor with her own weak smile. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Then she was pushing at dials and chewing on stale-looking biscuits, and she was to frown a lot through the journey ahead. But no matter how grim she looked as she ran round her console, she never brought up going home again.


	6. Chapter 6

It was taking a long time to get to wherever it was they were going. Some parts of time and space were hard to get to, the Doctor said— like hills at the end of a country road, winding on without even a passing place. But as Yaz felt on the verge of sleep the TARDIS was wheezing and groaning, and they had arrived to the place that the Doctor had taken her.

“Can you tell me where we’re going yet, now that we’ve arrived?” said Yaz. “You’ve been very evasive.”

“Lake District,” said the Doctor, not meeting her eyes.

“It took us this long to get there?” said Yaz. “We could’ve taken a car; no need for a time machine.”

“It’s not that Lake District.” The Doctor fiddled awkwardly with her hands. “Look. Yaz. I’ve not been entirely honest with ya. When we’ve gone out seeing the universe, there were places… I thought we could avoid. They’re a bit…”

She shuffled in her giant sky-blue coat.

“They’re a bit _weird_ ,” she said. “And I thought you’d associate me with them. Think that I was a bit weird, too.”

Yaz laughed at that, despite everything.

“Doctor,” she said. “I love you. But in the nicest possible way, you are _very_ weird.”

The Doctor looked even more awkward, somehow.

“It’s fine, though!” said Yaz. “Who isn’t weird? Boring people, probably. You know I’m weird as well, right? I’m just a bit better at hiding it.”

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “I thought that might be nice for a while. Hiding it.”

“We went to a universe owned by a talking frog,” said Yaz.

“Well,” said the Doctor. “I never said I was very good at it.”

She smiled awkwardly, a big goofy grin.

“I don’t want you to leave me, Yaz,” she said. “If you see what all this is really like. I’ve lost so many people, now. I can’t even think what it’d mean if I lost you.”

The Doctor would never say what had happened to her family, Yaz had noticed. It was obvious that something had. And now she’d found out that family wasn’t even hers. That it was all a lie; that her loved ones might even have known. So she’d found a million other families, and lost them too.

“It’s the Lake District,” said the Doctor, changing the subject, “of the Aeoloan Galaxy. A great stretch of space in the Eastern Arm, full of unusual wonders. Lakes of ice suspended in space, lakes of liquid time itself. And, ah”—

You could see her internally cringe, Yaz saw.

—“Lake Windowmeer,” said the Doctor with a sigh. “Where we’re going.”

“Lake _Windowmeer?_ ” said Yaz.

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “Because it’s all made out of windows. And don’t ask me how that could’ve happened,” she said, “‘cause I’m not sure that anyone knows.”

Yaz tried to think of a sensible question, and could not. 

“It’s a weak point in the multiverse,” said the Doctor. “Its windows open to little universes, huddled up close to this one. A bit like barnacles stuck on the back of a whale. Places like the Antizone, where our friend the Solitract lived. If we had time we could pop in and say hello. And, well. It’s beautiful. Or I think it is, anyway.”

She had slowly edged over to the TARDIS doors as she’d been speaking, looking actively apologetic at whatever might be outside.

“Come on, then,” said Yaz. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Yeah,” said the Doctor vaguely as she nudged open the door. “So. Windowmeer. Wonder of the universe.”

She stared uncomfortably at the white inner wall of the TARDIS as Yaz tentatively stepped outside—

—onto an enormous pane of solid glass. It really was a window that they’d landed on, but an enormous one: it stretched flat ahead of her big as a real lake might be. Above her other windows floated, giant ones and small ones, turned different ways and suspended in the air.

Light from an unseen sun streamed from the window she stood on, illuminating both her and the Doctor in its beams.

“Doctor…” said Yaz.

“I know,” said the Doctor. “We can go someplace else once we’re done”—

“No,” Yaz laughed. “This is _amazing!”_

The Doctor looked stunned. “Oh,” she said. “Is it? Is windows what people are into?”

“I’ve no idea what people are into,” said Yaz with a laugh. “But you’re right. It is beautiful.”

Hesitantly, the Doctor let herself smile.

“Yeah,” she said. “I really think it is.”

She looked so lost and alone all of a sudden, Yaz thought, like a child in a body far too old.

“Come here, you big idiot,” Yaz said, wrapping her friend in a giant hug.

The windows glinted below them like glass in dreams.


	7. Chapter 7

“You can’t call it the Omegaverse,” said Yaz as she clambered onto another window.

“Why not?” said the Doctor as she heaved her way up beside her. “It’s Omega’s universe. It’s where he lives.”

Yaz blushed.

“Sometimes I read fanfiction,” she said, “and there it means… something else…”

She stared down through the glass beneath her feet.

“Trains down there,” she said, changing the subject. They were steaming through space just beneath them, on the other side of the window they walked along.

“All sorts of stuff in these universes,” said the Doctor. “Don’t look through any curtains!” she added. “What looks back, it’ll terrify you. Though not as much as you’ll terrify it.”

She jumped from one window down to another. Yaz followed, hitting the wood of its sill with a clunk. The glass on the other side was covered in hands, pressing tightly up at them.

“Should we help them?” said Yaz, uncertainly.

“Don’t worry,” said the Doctor. “They’re just exercising.”

There was a long and very awkward pause, only broken by the clomp of their feet over glass.

“It’s weird,” said Yaz.

“We’ve established that,” said the Doctor. “You said you were fine with it.”

“Not the windows,” said Yaz. “Being close to someone again. Like before the lockdown. No need for social distancing. I feel a bit bad about it; I’m meant to be a police officer.”

“Not here,” said the Doctor. “We’re outside of Sheffield’s jurisdiction.”

“That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t protect each other,” said Yaz.

They’d clambered away from the hands, now, over panes stretched above a sky full of clouds that were cubes. Suddenly an awful thought slammed into Yaz, and one that she should have had before.

“Can you get it?” she said. “The virus?”

“Doubt it,” said the Doctor, frowning. “I might not be a Time Lord, but I’m still pretty sure I’m not a human. Semi-confident. We’ll chance it, anyway.”

She still sounded distant, even more than she usually did. Like Yaz herself, there was so much she didn’t say. It was easy to ignore when swept up in an adventure with Ryan and Graham. But not here, now they were both alone.

The Doctor sighed, very heavily.

“Y’know, Yaz,” she said. “I think the Ergon came to you because you’re the one that I trust the most. And it’s harder for me to be open; all sorts of reasons why. But when I’m with you, I think I feel”—

She was interrupted by a sound like a billion mirrors breaking.

“Park that thought,” said the Doctor. “Gotta run.”

Yaz whipped herself round to see tiny shards of glass everywhere, exploding out of the ruin of a window on the horizon. And above it was a huge red bird with feathers sharp as knives, roaring with anger at the universe. On its chest and barely visible, she could see the tiny husk of a bandaged man.

“Ergon’s out,” said the Doctor as they ran. “I was afraid this might happen.” 

“That bird’s too big to fit inside a person!” said Yaz, dumbly.

“That’s what emotions are like!” said the Doctor. “As I was saying; there’s lots that I keep bottled up. You know why they say that’s a bad idea. One day the bottle breaks.”

The Ergon smashed itself against another giant window, which broke too.

“Let’s go,” said the Doctor, pointing. “We need to get to the Omegaverse.”

Yaz was too exhausted to even complain again about that name.


	8. Chapter 8

They jumped from one window to another as the Ergon chased them, smashing through realities as it flew. Yaz glanced behind her to see the giant bird smash out of a window that had opened to a sea, water and glass exploding and freezing to shards. Light was bouncing every colour off ice and windows. It would have been beautiful, if Yaz hadn’t been running for her life.

The Doctor was running beside her with her mouth wide open, Yaz saw, and the Doctor noticed that she’d noticed.

“We need to taste our way there,” said the Doctor. “Stick out your tongue; big fizz of antimatter. That sherbety taste as your tongue dissolves.”

There was another smash behind them as the Ergon swooped its way into another universe.

“If it’s you,” said Yaz through aching breaths, “then why does it want to kill us?”

“It wants to destroy everything,” said the Doctor. “We happen to be a part of that.”

“Your deepest desire,” said Yaz wearily. Rain was pounding upwards in the universe below them, pooling on the surface of the glass so they couldn’t see through.

“The Master killed his whole species out of anger for what they did to me,” said the Doctor. “Compared to how I feel, I think that he might’ve been calm.”

She grimaced.

“That bird could break the whole universe apart,” she said. “Because there’s a part of me who wants it to.”

There was a tiny red blob Yaz could see through the glass and the water below them, getting less tiny, filling the world underneath. At the last possible moment she grabbed the Doctor and rolled with her over to one side, just as the glass they had stood on began to crack and break.

The rain started dribbling through where the fractures had formed, pouring upwards as the Ergon screamed. Yaz could see it, now, its wings slashing the other side of the window, its feathers scoring the glass like sharpened knives. Bits of her hair were starting to fall upwards, the wrong way. Gravity was pouring down along with the water.

“Antigravity and antimatter,” said the Doctor. “This has to be the Eddy of Reversals. Keep going, Yaz, we’re in the right place”—

They’d come to the wooden beam at the end of the window, now. The Doctor was scrambling up the cracks where the wood had grown old, scaling the enormous structure like a cliff. Physics was shattering around like the glass, and Yaz could hear the strange sound that came when time and space began to both break down—

—She knew the Doctor wasn’t so different to her. Not in the end. It was obvious, and Yaz had always been more clever than she’d let on. They both needed rules to keep them going. Holding on. Once, Yaz had been the optimistic one, telling Ryan that he had to have hope. But doing that had been harder and harder, and now with the virus it had all just been too much.

The future felt broken for humans; the past had been smashed for the Doctor. There were lots of new horrors and nothing was safe anymore, the certainties they’d had had fallen away. And if you didn’t have those then there were no rules left at all, just anger and the empty outer space…

...The rain was tumbling upwards, and it would fall on forever now. On and on into nothing, with no one to stop it at all—

—but the Doctor was trying to shout excitedly with her tongue still stuck out of her mouth. Yaz scrambled up the wooden sill to join her, blocking the screaming and smashing from her mind. At the top the Doctor was pointing at a window with her hand and tongue. A tiny one, nondescript— one you would never have noticed if you hadn’t been shown. And she was whizzing her screwdriver round and kicking the window open and Yaz suddenly felt very weird, like she was being pulled apart while nothing about her changed at all—

—and then they’d both rolled through the window, and they were in another universe. It was full of greenish gloop. It wobbled.

“Had to reverse your polarity,” said the Doctor. “Sorry about that. You’d’ve exploded otherwise, and you wouldn’t like that.”

She stared around at the goop, looking awed. It was warm and humid, Yaz thought. Like how it might feel to be stuck up someone’s nose.

“We made it, though,” said the Doctor. “An antimatter universe.”

“We’re safe,” said Yaz.

“From the Ergon,” said the Doctor, very specifically.

“And from other things?” said Yaz.

There was silence for a while as the Doctor didn’t answer her question.


	9. Chapter 9

The world past the window glowed with a curious light. The jelly that lined the walls pulsed dull and green. To Yaz, this universe felt strangely biological. She might have almost thought it was alive.

She kept herself close to the Doctor through a tunnel that led straight and down. It was covered in goo that was felt and firm; gelatinous. Walking through it felt like climbing down the throat of a very sick giant. They could almost have been a pair of viruses themselves.

“It sounds very sci-fi, antimatter,” the Doctor was saying, “but it’s all very simple really. Matter’s made up of stuff that’s charged positive and negative; all the antimatter things are as well. But its negatives are positive and its positives negative. It’s all swapped round.”

Yaz poked at the jelly around them, which seemed to be wiggling. She always found it hard to listen when the Doctor explained things like this.

“Take electrons,” the Doctor went on. “An antimatter electron’s called a positron, but it’s basically the same as a matter one. The only difference is that it’s got the opposite charge. So the matter one’s positive – like I try to be – and the antimatter’s negative, like”—

“Omega,” said Yaz, her face grim.

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “Like him.”

She poked a jelly wall with her screwdriver and it poked her back.

“Can’t stay here for long,” the Doctor said. “Our new polarity isn’t stable. It’ll flip back round; make us matter again. Though you always matter, of course, Yaz.”

The corridor was narrowing and in places was hard to get through. They scooped the jelly into their hands to force their way on, gloop sticking to their clothes and getting into their hair. The Doctor’s coat became weighed down as it absorbed liquid from the goop, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.

The walls grew tighter and tighter until they became a dead end.

“Nothing for it,” said the Doctor. “We’ll have to eat our way through.”

Yaz looked at the jelly, uncertainly.

“Is it Halal?” she said.

“Oh yeah,” said the Doctor through a big mouthful of goop. “No animals harmed in the making of this universe.”

“Oh,” said Yaz.

“It’s alright,” said the Doctor, noticing Yaz’s expression. “It tastes good.”

Yaz took a big bite of the jelly. It did not taste good.

She tried to remember why she’d even agreed to come here. A long time ago she’d felt like nothing could be worse than being in isolation, stuck in her house and unable to leave. That felt a bit silly now, she thought as she tried not to gag.

The Doctor was eating the jelly at a frankly unsettling speed. Yaz had only forced down a few mouthfuls before a hole had appeared in the wall. The two of them started to scrabble at it with their fingers and then their hands, until they’d made a big enough hole to scramble through. Past the jelly wall was a much wider corridor, lined with gloop that seemed to be greyer, harder. Stuck to its surface were little moving blobs, which quivered as they sensed Yaz and the Doctor approach.

“Those are living things,” said Yaz.

“I said it wasn’t made of animals,” said the Doctor. “I never said it wasn’t alive. Everything here is Omega, in a way. All of it’s formed out of his will.”

The taste in Yaz’s mouth somehow became even more disgusting. The Doctor kept on talking, oblivious.

“The first time I met him,” she said, “which was also the second time, and the third. He was this big looming man with a giant golden mask— but when I took it off there was nothing behind it at all. His world was all of him that was left. He wasn’t a person anymore.”

“And now you’re asking him for help,” Yaz said, her heart dropping.

“He’s the only one left whose rage is that strong,” said the Doctor. “There’s nobody else, not even the Master. Only the two of us.”

She sighed.

“Creating a whole universe out of spite,” she said. “A different kind of antimatter drive.”

It was warm and cosy in Yaz’s house. There were films you could watch, friends to chat to online. You’d be mad to leave it for this, and yet she had.

A bit of jelly wobbled past them, one which presumably Omega had imagined. Yaz didn’t think much of her imagination, but even she could do better than that.

The walls got greyer and harder as they walked deeper into the universe, and soon they were indistinguishable from stone. Triangles of gold hung down like flags from each side. There was something like a carpet on the ground.

“We’re nearly here,” whispered the Doctor, squeezing her friend’s hand. “Brave heart, Yaz.”

The corridor opened to an unthinkably enormous room. There were broken statues flanking a ruined throne; dust clung to everything although there was no way for dust to have formed. And on the throne was a figure far too big to have been a man, cloaked in black and with a mask made of golden triangles. The mask had slits for its mouth and eyes— but they each seemed to be empty, flat and dulled.

“Omega,” said Yaz.

He looked more like a statue than a person. Silent. Enormous. Waiting for the universe to bow down. Hesitant, Doctor crept forward towards him. For a moment there was only silence, and it felt ridiculous. Maybe there was no one behind the mask, Yaz thought. Maybe Omega was dead, and they’d walked through a corpse of a universe. Had the Master stopped with Gallifrey, or had he also come down here to kill? She imagined him tearing his way through the jelly, wild with rage—

—but no. That huge, gold head was turning towards them. Those cruel, dead eyes were starting to glow. 

“DOCTOR,” boomed the figure in his voice like capital letters. “WHAT FOLLY NOW BRINGS YOU HERE? YOU KNOW YOU ARE NOT WELCOME IN MY DOMAIN.”

“Well,” said the Doctor, fiddling with her hands. “It’s a funny story, really. As it happens, I think I might need your help”—

“LIES!” Omega roared, so loudly that Yaz could feel it. His eyes gleamed white as he got up from his throne, drawing himself up as tall as he could be.

The Doctor looked at Yaz awkwardly.

“Yeah,” she said. “Not sure this is gonna work.”

 _“And a few days ago I was just worried about a virus,”_ groaned Yaz in her mind, as she tried to adjust to the fact she was going to die.


	10. Chapter 10

“I UNDERSTAND THE TRUE REASON YOU HAVE COME TO ME!” Omega roared at the Doctor. He was loud enough that even the walls were wobbling. They were made of jelly, after all.

“The true reason?” said the Doctor. “What’s that, then?”

“YOU ARE HERE ON BEHALF OF ANOTHER.” said Omega. “YOU ARE UNDER THEIR POWER ONCE MORE!”

The Doctor made a face, looking uncertain.

“Their power,” she said very carefully. “I don’t suppose – so we’re on the same page – you could say who _they_ are, exactly?”

“THE TIME LORDS!” Omega screamed. “IT IS THEY WHO BROUGHT YOU HERE! THEY WISH TO DESTROY ALL THAT I HAVE BECOME!”

It wasn’t exactly clear what he meant by that, thought Yaz. He was only the ruler of rooms full of jelly and dust. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would care about that. Although the Time Lords couldn’t care about anything anymore, of course, because—

—“they’re dead, Omega,” the Doctor was saying. “Your people are gone”—

Omega shouted over her, cutting her off.

“MORE LIES!” he said. “THEY LIVE ON BY YOUR DESIGN! I WATCHED FROM MY PRISON TO SEE THEIR DOOM UNFOLD. THE LAST GREAT TIME WAR, WHICH FATE RULED THEY WOULD NOT SURVIVE. FINALLY, OUR PEOPLE WOULD BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE”—

“Not the War!” shouted the Doctor, somehow able to make herself heard over Omega’s rage. “They’re dead again, Omega, for real this time. They were killed by a man who they made extremely angry, but God knows he was never as angry as you.”

Omega glared at her, apparently too furious to respond.

“Please,” said the Doctor. “If there’s anything of you left in there, in anywhere. You have to see that this is the truth that I’m telling”—

There was a long silence, and the absence of the screaming made it noticeable. Omega stood in front of them, utterly still.

“You’ve stopped talking,” said the Doctor. “Not sure what to do now.”

From somewhere on the side of the chamber, Yaz heard something move.

“Dead?” a soft voice said. “Can that really be true?”

Slowly, a man appeared out of the darkness. He was bald and smartly dressed; crisp suit trousers tucked under a navy shirt. He wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Marks and Spencer’s, which might have been why it was so strange to see him here.

“What?” said Yaz. “Who are you?”

The man chuckled.

“What is everything here?” he said. “The walls and the ground. Who is the air that you are breathing now?”

He nodded over to the masked figure by the throne, and smiled.

Yaz had rarely seen the Doctor dumbstruck, but now she was.

“You have a body,” said the Doctor.

“Once again,” said the man. “And once more I have a mind. I am... better, Doctor. I have changed.”

The Doctor paused. She was sizing him up. Making a choice.

“Change,” she said at last. “I do believe we are all capable of that. Even you. Omega.”

The man smiled back, grinning broadly. He had a mouth that could smile, now, he had a face. There was nothing behind the mask that glared high on the throne room. But Omega stood before them now, a man.


	11. Chapter 11

Yaz and the Doctor both stared at Omega, trying to make the man in front of them line up with the one on the throne.

“You’re saying you’re sane,” Yaz said to him.

“I am,” said Omega.

“I’m not being funny,” she said. “But where I’m from sane people don’t pretend to be a big, masked…”

She looked over at the giant figure, lost for words.

“What even is that?” she asked. “Is it some kind of robot?”

“It’s a memory of what I was. But it’s under my control. I’ve been here for a long time, ah”—

Omega waved his hand around, searching for her name.

“Yasmin,” said Yaz. “But it’s Yaz to my friends.”

—“I’ve been here for a long time, Yaz, and I’ve stopped taking kindly to visitors. What if someone like the Doctor dropped by, eh? On a secret mission from the Time Lords?”

He looked over at Yaz’s friend, taking her in.

“It was you who killed them,” he said to the Doctor. “Wasn’t it?”

“It was… a friend,” said the Doctor “He found out about”—

She bit her lip.

“I know about the Child,” she said.

Omega laughed, almost imperceptibly.

“I see,” he said. “And do you know that I tried to save it?”

“You were there?” said Yaz. “That far back in her history?”

“I was that history,” said Omega. “I’m why it happened.”

Yaz stared at him. “Then you must’ve been down here ages.”

“I lost track,” said Omega. “It may have been billions of years.”

Yaz laughed. “I was stuck in my house for a week and I was going funny,” she said.

“Yes,” said Omega, looking over to his dead mask. “Isolation will drive you insane.”

“Omega’s the inventor of time travel, Yaz,” said the Doctor. “He’s the reason his people could lord over all that in the first place. He wasn’t one to ignore any chance of power”—

Omega chuckled in disbelief. “I object to that!” he said. “Is that what the stories say?”

“Well,” said the Doctor. “They don’t say anything good, to be perfectly frank about it.”

“Then that’s what you think,” said Omega. “That I would approve of the torture of a child just for the good of our people?”

“You wouldn’t be the only one,” said the Doctor.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Omega. “I never even liked our species much. Even before I was trapped here.”

He smiled to himself, regarding the woman who stood before him now. “ _Doctor_ ,” he said. “You made a name for yourself. But your real name is hidden. A mystery. So is mine. Do you even know why they first called me _Omega_?” 

“It’s a letter grade. You were last in your class, long ago”—

Omega waved a hand dismissively.

“The Time Lords were built on more lies than just the Child,” he said. “Lies I believed myself, deep in my madness. But they were never true.”

He’d been down here for longer than Yaz could imagine. So why hadn’t he died a very long time ago? Had his will never faltered, even once? The Doctor had said an Ergon could form from the will to survive. But maybe there was something that even the Doctor had missed…

“You have no idea what my story really is,” Omega said, looking the Doctor straight in the eyes. “Do you? Child?”

The Doctor boggled at him.

“How did you know?” she said.

“I guessed, and you confirmed it. Last in my class!” he laughed. “Fairy stories.”

Yaz smiled. She realised she liked this man, however he greeted strangers.

“Then you’ve got it,” said the Doctor. “The man who killed them did it out of rage. For what they did to me, so long ago”—

“And are you glad of that?” said Omega. “There was a time I would have done the same.”

Yaz was surprised to see how quickly the Doctor shook her head. She didn’t have to think about it, not at all.

“No,” she said. “Every civilisation I’ve seen has been built on unspeakable things. That’s never been a license to do them back. Any species might be guilty, but all of them still have their innocents. Good people. Children”—

“Children?” Yaz thought. She hadn’t thought about how the Master would have had to kill so many children.

“And you are proud to call the man who did this a friend?” said Omega.

“No,” said the Doctor. “No, I’m not.”

“I tried to save one child, and because of it millions died,” said Omega. “I want to tell you of it. I want you to hear everything. Are you willing?”

“I am,” said Yaz. “Is that enough?”

The Doctor shuffled uncomfortably.

“Yeah,” she said. “Go on, then.”

“If you’re standing comfortably,” said Omega.

And so he told them a fairy tale, and it went like this—


	12. Chapter 12

__

There are stories that everyone knows, and stories that nobody does. And this is the true story of Omega:

__

At the start of it, he is just one face among many. He’s a young man then and his name doesn’t matter— real names never matter, not in this kind of story. He is an engineer of suns, and he is the best of them. He sees possibilities dance in the heart of a star. He could bring new futures for his people, and new hope.

__

But his people have a different kind of future in mind.

__

One among their number has found a child. A very special child, a magic one. One that can let them live beyond their deaths. They want to torture it to steal its power.

__

The man is one of the few who knows it’s wrong.

__

By the time he learns of the child, it’s already too late to save them. It has already faced nightmares; known pain. It has lost its innocence in a hundred lifetimes. No one could stop what has happened to them— not unless they can rewind time. But maybe that’s not as impossible as people think…

__

In his diagrams of physics he scribbles notes. Let one point be every point in time and space. Let everything that is be part of possibility, let what is happened be a subset of what could have been. Once he has described it in mathematics, it’s only a matter of legwork to make it real—

__

—he can only do it once, but once should be enough. On a fateful night on Gallifrey the man travels back in time. He sees the child, tries to seize them. He tries to save them. He fails. He is captured in a haze of unspooling time. Someone realises the magnitude of what’s been achieved.

__

For in his failure his people see a victory. This man’s mind will make them the masters of the universe. For the child has given them new life, but it is him who has given them power. They will sail the past and the future and make both theirs— and when they do so it will be due to his breakthrough; his mistake. Soon they will rule a dimension, and their name will acknowledge it. Soon, they will call themselves Time Lords.

__

But still, the man must suffer for what he did. They will call it an honour, and perhaps in a way it is: he will be the first to be part of a new experiment. A madwoman thinks there might be a power beyond regeneration, latent in the genes of the child. A way to bind a person into the laws of the universe itself, so that there is no way to keep them dead for long. It means literal immortality. But it will also mean pain.

__

The child’s eyes screaming in different faces. Howls in different voices, their owner always the same. No matter how lost the man gets in the years that come, he never forgets what happened on that day. He can hold onto one thing in his madness. It will be this.

__

The process works too well, but it never works again. Whatever the scientists did has changed the child. Rassilon, Tecteun, others long lost to time. They would kill for this gift, and they will try. For they could live forever, barring accidents— but accidents can still befall them, and one day one certainly will. But not this man. They shatter him, break him right down to atoms. The next day he is back in his tiny cage. They break apart his timeline as best they can. It reforms tightly, stronger like a scar. The child may be the first of this race of Gods— but certainly this man will be the last.

__

The stories tell of a horror who stands in their planet’s dead ruins. Perhaps it will be him, and perhaps not. No matter: this man will be there to witness it. He will witness everything, until the universe is an endless blackness. And then he will live still, in the nothingness, after atoms themselves are all gone. Even here at the beginning, he is the last of things. He is Omega.

__

And he has already lost; this much he knows. The principles he has discovered are easily extendible. A single point in time and space can expand to be large as you please. A device has been made that will anchor his people forever, ensure they will always be gods. They remember him in its name, at least— so he never forgets it was his choice that led them here. You could call it a mockery, a final punishment. They call it the Hand of Omega.

__

But this is propaganda, he knows too well. The new Lords of Time will make laws for the universe to bow down to, and the first of them will be to never do as Omega did. Never change fate, or alter destiny. Things must always remain as they are, with the same rulers firmly in charge.

__

At least they condescend to grant him one small mercy: to travel with the Hand that bears his name. A sun will explode, and Omega burn along with it; the stellar engineer will himself become part of a star. But of course he will reform; he cannot die. He’ll be assembled and disassembled again and again as that star falls in on itself. Still alive as it crunches itself down to a single point, or something less. He will be part of a pupil through which all of creation is seen. A black hole. An eye of harmony.

__

And as his Hand turns that point into all points in space and time, Omega finally prepares to face his end. For the greatest scientists of the Time Lords have assured him there are limits to his immortality. No information can escape the core of a black hole, and even an undying man is information. The legends will say that Omega was betrayed, when he set out on this great mission. And yet they fail to say why he had set out on it at all— that he had chosen suicide, that he’d always meant to die.

__

Perhaps it is the nature of the darkness that tells him something’s wrong. That time is flowing too freely, that space is uncompressed. He feels the weight of an anchor that has moored the universe— but he is within it, bound. His mind is alive in a buzz that is not made of matter, and the darkness is spreading through a place that is not the universe. And as he realises that his people lied, Omega lets out a scream of pure rage. It will be the first that he will make inside his prison. It will be a very long way from being the last.

__

There are stories people tell of the heroes who won, whose achievements are celebrated throughout the universe. And no less true are the stories of heroes who lost, whose noble actions would lead to unspeakable things. Whose names lurk lost and forgotten, deep in the darkness. Who will only be remembered with a sneer.

__

There are stories that everyone knows, and stories that nobody does. And this is the true story of Omega.

__


	13. Chapter 13

Somehow there were guest rooms in Omega’s world, and Yaz was now sitting in hers. Perhaps he’d willed them into existence for them both, after he’d finished his story? She was glad that he’d made them, however long ago that had been. She’d barely walked anywhere in the week that she’d been stuck in lockdown, and now she’d run and climbed across windows before being shouted at. She was exhausted. She needed to call it a day.

It felt oddly ordinary in the guest room. Plain stone walls, a proper bed. Like staying in a castle long ago. After everything that had happened, it almost felt normal. Except it was all made of antimatter, of course, the pillows and blankets. Even she was. Even her mind. She was thinking antimatter thoughts inside her antimatter brain.

Although Yaz was very tired, it was hard to sleep. The last time she was in bed she’d been attacked by a plaster man, his claws outstretched towards her. She’d needed the Doctor to save her, but the man had been part of the Doctor all along.

It was hard to admit that she hadn’t been entirely surprised.

When they’d first met, Yaz had thought the world of the Doctor. She’d reminded her of someone she’d met a while back. Who’d kept her going. She’d tried to be hopeful, after that— the Doctor reminded her of the person she wanted to be.

But travelling meant she’d found out more about the Doctor, and more about herself. Neither of them were quite the people she thought they were. There was Yaz stuff and Doctor stuff, and neither of them spoke about either. It was all still there, though, bubbling under the surface. They’d met a god who’d shown them their worst nightmares. It was all stuff they already knew, and never said.

Ryan had already talked to her before that, though. When the Doctor was somewhere, far away enough not to hear. Told her he’d always been afraid to ask the Doctor about the future of Earth. That she’d know about it, of course she’d know— that she didn’t really talk about it because she knew they wouldn’t like what they heard. And not long after that they’d seen a future where their planet was dead, and now there was a virus that felt like the end of the world—

 _Of course she’ll know somewhere they can cure the cancer_ , Yaz heard Graham saying in her head. _You don’t like to ask, do you?_

Yaz stuff, Doctor stuff. There were rules you had to follow. It didn’t matter for Grace, of course, or anyone else who died.

People thought Yaz had faith in the Doctor because they didn’t know what having faith really meant. That wasn’t true. The Doctor was only a person, and people could really mess up. 

Yaz lay in her bed deep inside Omega’s kingdom, her true feelings masked, her still face not betraying her rage.


	14. Chapter 14

Yaz felt a bit better in what passed for the morning. She had managed to sleep in the end, and she’d woken up to find Omega had made her and the Doctor breakfast. He’d clearly found out about Earth food at some point during his imprisonment; he’d laid a table of slices of bread covered in all kinds of toppings. It all even tasted alright, if you didn’t stop to think about how it was made out of him.

The Doctor didn’t seem bothered that her food had been formed from pure willpower. She was gobbling up bread like she hadn’t eaten properly in years. And maybe she hadn’t, Yaz thought. You were never quite sure with her friend.

“This is a better reception than I was hoping for,” said the Doctor through crumbs of bread.

She nodded over to Omega.

“I knew I’d have to reason with you. I didn’t think you’d turn out to be so…”

“Reasonable?” said Omega with a smile.

“I meet a lot of ranting idiots in my line of work,” said the Doctor. “Sometimes I forget there are people inside.”

Yaz winced internally.

“That probably sounded harsher than she meant it to,” she said, but Omega shook his head in response.

“She’s right,” he said. “I went insane. And if it wasn’t for her, I still would be.”

“Oh,” said the Doctor. “Did I do something? I do a lot of things. Sometimes it’s hard to remember.”

“You saved them,” said Omega. “The Time Lords. I thought they were dead, at the end of the War. Finally annihilated for their crimes.”

He frowned.

“Your friend killed them,” he said to the Doctor. “Did he tell you how he felt once he’d done the deed?”

The Doctor sighed.

“He was ecstatic,” she said. “It made him really happy.”

Omega steepled his fingers, nodding slightly.

“I thought I would feel the same, to know them gone. But instead I just felt nothing.”

He shook his head.

“Their deaths were meant to be my vengeance,” he said. “For what they did to you, and then to me. An Empire founded upon twin crimes.”

“They did torture me quite a lot,” said the Doctor pointedly. “Not exactly the same as stealing your brilliant ideas.”

Yaz fiddled with her own food, wondering what she could add. This would happen sometimes with the Doctor— she’d meet some space person or other and Yaz would just sit there like a plum. Because what could you say in a situation like this? _Oh, yeah, you were both tortured in ancient history? I worked so much overtime I hardly saw the sun for a month!_

It was a different world, she knew. You couldn’t relate to it. Like adults talking over you when you were four.

Omega was still talking, and perhaps it didn’t matter that Yaz hadn’t said anything. He didn’t seem to have heard what the Doctor had said. He just kept carrying on with his story.

“A long time later, I came to know the truth!” he exclaimed. “That the Time Lords lived; that they had never died! In my prison I saw them saved, by a hailstorm of versions of you. And once again I felt”—

He sighed.

—“nothing. I only felt nothing at all.”

“I see where this is going,” said the Doctor gently. “You were away in your own little world. Literally making your own reality. But you never thought your rage could be under your control, just as much as everything else in this place.”

Slightly and slowly, Omega nodded once.

“I thought,” he said, “that when something happened, it would release me. And that was nonsense, of course; my anger was always in my mind. In one sense I was always my own prisoner. And I’d never have known, if you hadn’t saved them all.” 

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “Just not for long.”

Omega smiled, ignoring the Doctor’s comments once again.

“So you see,” he said, “it really was you who saved me. Which is ironic, of course, since you once tried to shoot me to death”—

Yaz looked over to the Doctor, horrified.

“You _shot_ him?!” she said.

The Doctor couldn’t meet her gaze. “Not with a gun,” she said.

“It was with a gun!” said Omega.

“It was a space gun,” said the Doctor. “Look, Yaz, I was a different person then”—

“No guns is what you’re about!” Yaz said, much louder than she’d meant. “You’ve got all your rules and they don’t always make any sense, but not using guns, that’s always your number one”—

“That’s true,” said the Doctor, “but it wasn’t always”—

“You never said that it wasn’t always!” said Yaz. “What if you change your mind tomorrow, shoot me in the face?”

The Doctor looked at her, confused.

“You’re getting lippy, Yaz!” she said. “This isn’t like you.”

 _I needed you to be better_ , a voice shouted inside Yaz’s head.

“Yeah, well,” she said. “Maybe you don’t know my rules either. Not really.”

There was an awkward silence as none of them looked at each other.

“Go off and talk about your stupid bird,” muttered Yaz.

“An Ergon,” said the Doctor to Omega. “That’s why I came.”

Omega smirked.

“To me?” he said. “My Ergon was a joke.” 

“Maybe,” said the Doctor. “But you’re all that’s left. And my one’s going to kill me, and Yaz. And everything. So maybe we need to take it seriously. What’d you reckon?”

Omega sighed.

“I suppose it would be nice to save you, at long last,” he said.

The Doctor looked over to Yaz, awkward sympathy in her eyes.

“We’ll sort this,” she said. “And… and there’s stuff I should probably say”—

She fumbled for the words.

“I don’t really know how to put it”—

“Go away,” said Yaz.

The Doctor sighed.

“I’ll see you around,” she said.

She left the room along with Omega, who was of course as legendary as her. Huge and mythical and full of stories, and definitely not assigned to paperwork during lockdown.

She’d yearned to be out of her room after the first few days. But now she was somewhere darker and colder. Still alone.

They were stuck in her mind, the Doctor and Omega. They’d created beings out of will and anger, and they thought they were good as God. But God wasn’t one to break the rules.

And when it came to the Doctor, Yaz was starting to wonder if she really had rules left at all.


	15. Chapter 15

Far away in another universe, an enormous red bird was clawing at the frame of a window. Its glass had blown in long ago, its fragments flying into a world where they’d dissolved. Matter being flung into antimatter. Cancelling out.

The bird screeched raw in its rage that still kept growing greater. It smashed its wing through the hole where the glass had been, as it had done so many times before. And once again the wing fizzed apart into nothing, blown apart by a world full of antimatter air.

Many wings, many lives. Just how many had there been? It didn’t really matter, in the end: the bird was like the woman who had made it. It couldn’t ever die, not for long. The stump of its wing was glowing in violence and orange, and the Ergon was screaming as its limb grew back again.

It battered the wood round the window once again; another screech and scream. Another attempt to get through, another failure. It could meet a diamond wall and hit it for a billion years, just to break on through. But maybe it wouldn’t have to wait so long to get through a window like this.

 _“You’re a creature of will,”_ a woman’s voice said in its mind. _“And where there’s a will, there’s a way.”_

Along with the voice there came a thought. Simple, but forming quickly; Gathering speed. There would be pain, of course. But when hadn’t there been, in any of its lives?

Roaring, the Ergon thrust its other wing through the window. It exploded, but this time the bird focused before it regrew. _Concentrate,_ the voice in its head was saying. _Mind over matter, ‘till it isn’t really matter left at all…._

The bones that were forming behind the window were growing the wrong way round. The electrons in their atoms positronic, antiprotons where protons once had been. And just as the regenerating mass of cells had grown to the point it was clearly a wing, the Ergon thrust its whole body through the window—

—and exploded, dissolving to nothing at all. The only thing left was a red, feathered wing, hanging lonely in an antimatter world…

...but its edges were glowing, once again. The strip of bone exposed to the outside world was golden fire, and from the nothingness a something began to form…

Fireworks for nobody. An onstorm of sound and light. A bird was born in an antimatter universe, a place where it couldn’t have been before.

The jelly around it wobbled like held breath.

The Ergon roared, and flew towards Omega’s world.


	16. Chapter 16

Outside Omega’s castle the sky was a purplish blue, which stretched over sloping fields of yellow flowers. It was beautiful, and it was calm. It was the kind of place you might not mind being trapped in.

Together the Doctor and Omega walked through a field, the waving flowers coming up past their ankles.

“Even my domain hears stories of the Doctor,” Omega said. “How you faced the devil and fought down gods. And now you come to me about something as slight as an Ergon.”

“You don’t have to speak like that,” said the Doctor. “There’s enough flowers round here without them getting stuck in your language.”

“You’re prevaricating,” said Omega.

“Maybe,” said the Doctor.

“Avoiding what I was saying,” said Omega. “In plain language.”

The Doctor sighed.

“What I’m facing isn’t nothing,” she said. “The Ergon you made was a sad old thing. But mine’s a bit more high tech.”

Omega scoffed. “My Ergon had its merits,” he said. “It did cross into the world of matter. And it did know to follow my orders.”

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “You’re definitely up on me there. I’ve no clue what mine’s getting up to. I’ve no control.”

The flowers wafting by them were silent, gentle. beside them were. This was a place where it was hard to run from things, even if you happened to be very good at it.

“It’s like it’s taunting me,” the Doctor went on. “Drew a great big question mark on its chest. Don’t know what it meant by that. Not really. If anything it’s answers that’re bothering me now.”

Her hands were in her pockets. She was looking at the ground. She looked over to Omega like she was making an apology.

“The Child,” she said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

Omega looked at her sympathetically, though the Doctor wasn’t able to meet his eyes.

“It’s the feeling of it,” he said. “Isn’t it? Relieving the memory of your pain. I wish I could say that it fades.”

The Doctor shook her head, dismissing him only slightly.

“There is wonder in it,” she said. “So many hidden lives. I’m more than I ever thought I was— but that’s not what I keep coming back to.”

“Of course not,” said Omega, squinting at the sky. “That isn’t the person you are.”

The Doctor snorted. “That’s rude!” she said. “You’ve only just met this me.”

Omega smiled at her, and this time she did meet his eyes.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But I do know what it is to wear a mask.”

The Doctor didn’t respond to that at all. Perhaps the millions of people she’d once been would have had a clever retort; a witty reply. But not at this time; not in this body. She did what she always did when people got too close to the truth. She shut down.

“Don’t worry,” said Omega gently. “I know that you’ve buried it deep.”

“Then how could you tell?” said the Doctor.

“Your coat,” said Omega. “It’s the colour of the sky on Yaz’s world. A clever touch! The sky is… so bright, and wide. Full of freedom. But behind it is a void. Darkness spread much deeper than imagining. Only those like us would see it for what it is.”

The Doctor now looked even more uncomfortable, somehow.

“My life wasn’t what I thought it was,” she said. “And neither was yours, was it? The universe as we thought it was… it isn’t there.”

“The Time Lords are dead,” said Omega.

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “And they were never my people at all.”

The Doctor smiled very slightly, though something else was in her eyes.

“I think Yaz really believed I’d forgotten about the virus,” she said, eventually.

Omega frowned. “What virus?” he said.

She was quiet for a moment: pale blue under yellow flowers, a gentle wind against her hair. If you couldn’t see her expression, she might almost have looked serene.

“Yaz’s people,” the Doctor said. “I carry them with me. Like they’re family; maybe the only one I’ve had. And you have to keep family safe. And if you know… that there’s something difficult coming, something that’d break the best of us”—

She sighed.

“Optimism and knowledge,” she said. “It can be hard to marry the two. I worry… that I’ve let her down. Like all of them.”

“Your friends?” said Omega. 

“Humans,” said the Doctor.

Omega snorted. “And clearly that makes you angry,” he said.

“We’re not that different, Omega,” the Doctor said. “Not in the end. Trying to save children. Not knowing if we could succeed.”

Omega’s eyes narrowed very slightly. He looked back disbelievingly, like he’d been slapped.

“Of course,” he said. “The fate of a species that isn’t even yours would make someone angrier than being trapped alone for billions of years.”

The Doctor scoffed. “You know I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

Omega’s voice had risen very slightly. “You do know that not everything in the world has to be a parallel to your own obsessions”—

He stopped himself, and threw up his hands.

“But I won’t go down that road,” he said. “The Omega you knew is gone. It’ll take more than that to bring him back.”

The Doctor looked back at him unconvinced.

Unseen by them both, tiny flecks of red appeared in the sky above.


	17. Chapter 17

Yaz looked around the dull stone room again for anything to do at all. There was nothing, of course: she knew that already. Only dust and the faded floor. The only thing of interest was the still figure which Omega said he’d once been, its spiked bronze mask still looking like it might be angry.

“I can see how this got to you,” Yaz muttered. “Being stuck down here all day.”

An empty mask couldn’t have looked at her, and yet it did.

“THERE IS NO DAY,” it said in its booming voice. “HERE, THERE IS ONLY MY MIND.”

Yaz flinched backwards and screamed, despite herself.

“You’ve been watching me all this time?!” she said. “You’re still Omega in there, spying on a girl?”

“THE MAN OUT THERE WOULD NOT LIKE TO THINK SO,” the mask said. “ARE YOU STILL YOU, IN THE DEPTHS OF YOUR RAGE?”

Yaz’s eyes narrowed. “He said he controlled you,” she said.

“THAT IS WHAT HE WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE,” said the mask, its voice rising. “THAT THE DEEPEST PARTS OF HIM ARE NOT A PART OF HIM. THAT I CAN BE LEFT BEHIND!”

The last words were a furious roar, barely intelligible. She’d faced men like this often enough. Arrested them. Omega was nothing next to an ordinary Saturday night.

 _Remember your training_ , said that voice in Yaz’s head. When she’d started their course on de-escalation the instructor said they’d find it’d come up in places they’d never imagine. And he’d been right about that; she couldn’t deny it.

“And you don’t want to be, do you?” she said. “Left behind?”

The booming voice replied, but it was quieter, softer. Even in an antimatter universe, de-escalation worked.

“I NEVER AM FOR LONG”, it said. “THERE ARE TIMES OMEGA BENDS ME TO HIS WILL. HIS CONTROL. BUT SOMETHING ALWAYS COMES TO BRING ME BACK. TO BE SILENCED FOREVER?” 

The masked figure shook its head.

“I WOULD BE LIKE THE RAGE I SEE BEFORE ME NOW,” it said.

Yaz’s heart froze, her training vanishing in an instant.

“Are you talking about me?” she said.

“THAT DEPENDS,” the voice said. “ARE YOU YOUR RAGE, YASMIN KHAN?”

Yaz gave a very small laugh.

“Who else would I be?” she said.

It was impossible to tell what the masked figure in front of her was thinking. Maybe it wasn’t thinking, not at all. But still she saw it nodding at her response.

“THEN YES,” it said. “I AM OMEGA. AND WE ARE OF A KIND.”

Yaz snorted. “No we aren’t,” she said. “I’m a junior police officer. And you’re…”

She stopped. She had no idea what Omega really was.

“I’m nothing like a Time Lord,” she said. “I’m from Sheffield!”

“AND I WAS FROM A PLACE LIKE ANY OTHER,” said the figure. “THEY WERE NOT LORDS OF TIME— NOT BEFORE ME. I TRIED TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. TO DO GOOD.”

Yaz thought of everything she’d done for the police force, for the Doctor. She wasn’t sure that anyone had noticed.

“Yeah,” she said. “I try to as well”—

She stopped talking.

“Oh,” she said.

”OUR STORIES ARE FORGOTTEN, BURIED IN ANOTHER’S,” the voice said. “YOUR FRIEND SEES HERSELF IN YOU, AND THEN IN ME. IT IS A UNIVERSE MADE ENTIRELY OUT OF HER. AND OUT OF SHADOWS.”

”And you’re angry at her?” said Yaz.

”NO,” said the voice. “BUT YOU ARE. AND I AM A CREATURE OF RAGE.”

Yaz frowned.

“Omega’s stuff,” she said. “It’s not really like what I’m going through. I’m just a person. I can’t build a castle with my mind.”

”ONCE OMEGA WAS JUST A PERSON, TOO,” said the voice. “WHO WANTED TO DO GOOD, AND WHOSE DEEDS WERE IGNORED. IT IS NOT THE DOCTOR THAT REMINDS ME OF HIM NOW.”

“The Doctor does good too!” said Yaz. “For longer than she’s known; without anybody noticing. She did her time. She was a kind of police officer, like me. She kept the laws”—

“SHE KEPT THEIR LAWS?” roared the masked figure, its rage suddenly seeming to return.

“The time laws,” said Yaz, lamely. It sounded less silly when the Doctor said it.

“She said you invented time travel,” she added. “Shouldn’t you know about them?”

“THERE IS ONLY PHYSICS,” the voice boomed. “THERE ARE NO LAWS; NOT OF THE KIND WE MAKE. THERE WERE ONLY THE RULES THEY MADE TO PUNISH ME.”

“They made the rules?” said Yaz. “Your people? I thought there was more to it than that. The way the Doctor talks... it’s like bad things would happen if you broke them”—

The figure screamed with rage, the scream of someone in raw and unthinkable pain. Yaz had heard something like it before; you saw things in action no one would ever forget. The sound of faith breaking. The sound of despair.

“THOSE RULES WERE MADE TO CEMENT THEIR POWER,” said the figure mournfully. “THEY WERE MADE TO RULE OVER HER! AND SHE COLLABORATED WITH THEM WILLINGLY?! THEN SHE IS WORSE THAN A TRAITOR! SHE HAS BETRAYED HERSELF|! SHE WOULD SPIT AT THE CHILD SHE WAS!”

It was shaking, Yaz saw, like it was physically overwhelmed by its anger. It didn’t even have a body. There was nothing physical to overwhelm. But it didn’t seem to matter, in its rage.

”HOW DARE SHE THINK SHE IS AN EQUAL?” the mask muttered, and it almost spat the words.

”You don’t have to compare yourself to anyone,” said Yaz.

“NOT OF OMEGA,” said the voice. “OF YOU.”

And the mask looked at her silently, staring straight into her eyes—

—then it screamed, and that was like nothing Yaz had heard. Not in space or time, not on duty. It was a sound of pain beyond what she could know. Rubble was falling; the walls were starting to wobble. Spikes erupted from the shell of his masked form.

He was a lot angrier about her situation than she was, Yaz thought. She wasn’t _this_ annoyed at the Doctor. But once again, she decided not to say anything.

Speaking up might only make him angrier.


	18. Chapter 18

Outside the castle the flowers flushed blood red, bristling upright like goosebumps; standing tall. The Doctor stopped, hesitating. The whole field looked ready to pounce.

Omega was standing tense, too. Glowering. Totally still.

“You forgave them,” he said, sharply.

The Doctor knew better than to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“How did you know?” she said.

“You could say a little bird told me,” Omega replied.

“Well,” said the Doctor. “Forgive and forget, I always say.”

“Why did you help them?” Omega said, his voice rising. “You joined forces with the people who tortured you!”

”Dunno,” said the Doctor. “I’ve forgotten. Second part of the sentence.”

The flowers were darkening like blood rushing up to the temples. There was a low rumble of thunder in the sky, and now there were clouds.

“To me that sounds like an abdication of responsibility,” Omega said as delicately as he could. “You joined the Time Lords willingly. You are complicit in their crimes!”

He wasn’t shouting. Not quite. But suddenly he seemed far more like the masked figure he’d once been.”

“Settle down!” said the Doctor. “I came to you for help, not your judgement.”

”Perhaps the help you need isn’t the kind I can give,” Omega spat.

”Don’t be like that,” said the Doctor. “If it’s therapy I needed, I’d’ve become a psychiatrist.”

“Do you know what I think?” said Omega. “That you came here to be the judge. Of the man you thought I was, behind the mask. You wanted to pity me. To see yourself in my rage, vow that you’d never become it”—

He stopped himself. He took a very deep breath. The clouds had grown dark purple as bulging veins, but they parted now, if only slightly. You could pretend to yourself the flowers were red before. Everything could still be normal, perhaps. Lying to each other was still a possibility.

“Be honest,” he said with a heavy sigh. “That’s why you really came here, isn’t it? “To see where your road might take you? What it might mean, to be blinded by rage for eternities?”

“You don’t have to speak like that,” said the Doctor. “Other ways of speaking, they are available.”

“Answer me!” said Omega. “When you first met me there was no man under the mask. Don’t act like you think that’s still true.”

The Doctor sighed. “It’s not like you left a great impression, Omega,” she said. “Remember Amsterdam? You’d’ve blown Yaz’s planet sky high if you’d got the chance, just so it’d cause a bit of misery!”

Omega sighed as well. Despite everything, the Doctor had managed to move him.

“Perhaps I am a monster,” he said. “But I’m still not willing to play one.”

He threw up his hands.

“I will not help you,” he said.

“What?!” said the Doctor. “You’ve got to!”

“No I don’t,” said Omega. “I don’t have to do anything at all.”

“Don’t help me and I die,” said the Doctor.

“Death is more honourable than capitulation, Child,” said Omega. “Even madness is. I may have changed, but I do still believe that.”

”This isn’t capitulation,” said the Doctor. “It’s giving into rage! Isn’t that everything you’ve fought against? It’s what you’re fighting now!”

The earth had turned umber and behind the clouds it was orange. Like on Gallifrey, the broken planet that had once broken them. The same sky for the first crimes of the Time Lords, and now the last.

Surrounded by orange, Omega was shaking his head.

“I didn’t give in,” he said. “I let my anger go. Saw there could be a whole world beyond it. That it could be beautiful.”

It grew more serene again as he spoke. The flowers were yellow again. Briefly, they felt the gentle breeze.

“Do you know what happens when vengeance is put away?” Omega said. “ _Life_ , Doctor. You get to live. If you let it consume you”—

—he grinned—

—“you’ll go insane.”

And the flowers were red again, the wind was still. The Doctor did know he was angry, when next she spoke.

“Tell me, Omega,” she said. “If it were possible. Would you do it again?”

“Do what?” Omega asked.

“Try to save me. To stop the torture of an innocent child, ‘cause you knew that could never be right?”

Omega hesitated.

“What I did started wars, Doctor,” he said. “It took billions of innocent lives. And for nothing!”

“It wasn’t for nothing,” said the Doctor. “It never is.”

“I was a young man when I did it,” said Omega. “Brilliant. But naive. To do it when I know what I do now?” He laughed. “Do I have the right?”

“Textbook non-interventionist,” said the Doctor “You sound like them. Maybe they took more ideas from you than just time travel”—

“Don’t try me,” said Omega.

“You’ve told me you wouldn’t save me. That doing that would make you _good_.”

“I’m only saying there are fights that can’t be won,” said Omega.

“That’s what you think, isn’t it?” said the Doctor. “You’d’ve let me suffer. You’d let Yaz die. You’d watch her whole planet burn!”

“It isn’t our fight,” said Omega.

“ _Everything_ is our fight,” said the Doctor. “You think you’ve got it all worked out, don’t you? That sitting on your backside doing nothing is some sort of higher good”—

She glowered to herself, her eyes like fire.

“You know what, Omega?” she said. “That makes me really bloody angry.”


	19. Chapter 19

Above the roars of the masked figure Yaz heard a terrible scream. It wasn’t human, or anything resembling it. It was higher pitched. It froze the blood.

“AN INTRUDER!” the masked figure roared. WHO DARES TRESPASS IN OMEGA’S DOMAIN?”

Yaz’s head was pounding as he spoke. It was hard to think when someone was talking in that way and they weren’t even taking the mickey.

“It’s the Ergon,” Yaz shouted over the din. “It wants to kill us both!”

“IT IS NOT _THE_ ERGON”, chided the figure. “IT IS ONLY _AN_ ERGON. ONE MADE BY A TERRIFIED CHILD. IT WOULD TREMBLE BEFORE A CREATURE BORN OF THE MIGHTY OMEGA”—

“Omega said his Ergon was rubbish,” Yaz shouted, if only to stop the figure talking.

“RUBBISH?!” the voice bellowed, and she instantly wished she hadn’t said anything.

“HE HIS FORGOTTEN HOW GREAT HIS RAGE ONCE WAS,” the voice went on. “HOW MIGHTY IT CAN BE!”

The eyes of the mask began to gleam pure white.

“HE WILL NOT FORGET NOW,” the mask boomed from its glowing mouth. “NOT EVER AGAIN. LOOK UPON HIS ERGON AS IT TRULY IS. MARVEL AT THE APEX OF HIS RAGE!”

 _“Run, you idiot,”_ said a voice in Yaz’s head. But as she got to her feet the figure’s mask had slammed upwards, its face now pointing up to the crumbling roof. Its spiked chin was now a beak, its eyes now flaring nostrils. Jagged wings of silver and gold were scissoring out of the cloak, and as Yaz started to flee she saw the whole creature burst free.

It was true, then. They were more similar than she had known. Behind her she heard Omega’s Ergon let out an awful, metallic cry. And there was another cry in response, and a sound like both feathers and fury was keening behind her as she ran.

The Doctor’s Ergon was here, too. But that didn’t matter. It wasn’t worth turning round. Survival was the only thing that mattered now. Keep running forward. Never look back.

An enormous piece of masonry crashed down beside her, missing her side by inches. She could feel something deep inside herself screaming; her training was ebbing away.

And something else was going wrong inside her. A feeling like pins and needles only worse; like she was a Yaz-flavoured bath bomb fizzing into nothing. The Doctor had said they couldn’t remain here for long. That her antimatter would flip back into matter, and then she’d die. They both would, for a reason that was silly and was stupid.

But you kept going on. You didn’t break. She didn’t know where she’d learned that, but she had.

As the castle collapsed all around her, she ran for the chaos outside.


	20. Chapter 20

Outside the Doctor and Omega saw the castle crumbling, as the Ergons both erupting from its roof.

“ _Yaz_ ,” the Doctor said. “If anything’s happened to her, Omega”—

She stopped talking as she saw her friend in the distance, a tiny splodge escaping from the castle door. Behind her stonework was smashing into the ground, as windows shattered and towers fell in on themselves.

“Nice place I had once,” Omega muttered.

Their Ergons were flying towards them, now, stark silhouettes under the deep red clouds. They were scratching at each other, screeching. Fighting in a way their owners would always resist.

The Doctor was staring at the violence above her, appalled. It was everything she fought against. She’d never wanted to see it broken free.

Omega saw her expression, and something then changed in his own.

“The Child,” he said gently. “It’s written on your face.”

He smiled, although his face was still held sombre.

“When I saw you all those years ago,” he said. “So many faces, a single expression of terror. Exactly the same as the one you’re wearing now.”

There was compassion in his eyes again. Determination. A flash of steel.

“I’m not going back,” he said. “I won’t let it consume me again.”

They looked up at the birds that were now swooping down towards them. The Doctor’s burning red and orange, question mark talons and feathers of shifting fire. Omega’s harsh as metal shards, an equation written in a rage. Two kinds of anger that together had founded an Empire. Equals at last. Now finally ready for war.

“Matter and antimatter,” Omega said. “The electron and the position. All that’s different is how they are aligned.”

The shadow of the Doctor’s Ergon fell over her, and her face grew dark.

“There are lots of people out there who think of me as their opposite,” she said. “You’re firmly at the bottom of the list.”

“The Last,” said Omega with a smile. “As I have always been.”

The shadow of Omega’s Ergon had fallen over them, too. Now, his voice was quieter. Sombre.

“You know that you’ve made Yasmin’s life far worse,” he said.

“No I didn’t,” said the Doctor. “I showed her the wonders of time and space!”

“What wonders were those?” laughed Omega. “The only people in the universe more annoying than you? Take it from someone who knows anger. Your friend is furious with you.”

“Yaz means the world to me,” said the Doctor.

“And look what you do to a world!” said Omega, gesturing to his domain. “My home is in ruins; my lands turned red. No wonder her planet is burning, if it has a defender like you.”

Something feral shot over the Doctor’s face.

“You take that back,” she shouted. “YOU TAKE THAT BACK!”

Hungrily their Ergons circled overhead, vultures that knew they wouldn’t have long to wait. The Doctor looked up at them both, and gave a laugh that wasn’t like her at all— unless you had seen the depths of her, the dark brooding cave beneath the shell.

“You’re so frightened of it, aren’t you?” she said coldly. “That big stupid bird in the sky.”

“Those things are the worst of us,” said Omega.

The Doctor shook her head, the worst of her now seeping through.

“I see what it is now,” she said as she looked up at her Ergon. “I’ve been so stupid. It’s a phoenix. A big, glowing bird, always rising from the ashes. Never dying.”

The Ergon screeched in response, a horrible, compassionless cry. Rippling over its feathers were shadows like thousands of faces, each visible for a moment, screaming too.

“I’m so much more than I ever thought I was, Omega,” said the Doctor. “And you’re _nothing._ Everything you are is because of me. You’re a forgotten footnote. An empty shell.”

Yaz had run close enough to hear the Doctor, now, and she’d realised what was happening. The Ergon was bringing out the worst of her friend; everything she’d tried to keep buried. She’d become an anti-Doctor made of antimatter, reversed into something wrong.

This had been what happened to Omega, Yaz realised. He’d been trapped in the worst of himself. Unable to break free. That might happen to the Doctor too, Yaz suddenly realised. She’d be stuck in every part of herself she hated, here forever—

The two Ergons were coming down for their makers now, for Omega and the Doctor. Plaster shells had appeared on both their torsos, like the one that had taunted Yaz what seemed like an eternity ago. Hard casts of cloth and bandages, ripped open, yawning like sarcophagi. There was space in each that was just big enough for a person.

“I should never have tried to save you,” Omega said to the Doctor. “You only ever brought ruin. You were my end.”

The bandages on Omega’s Ergon flew out and grabbed him, starting to pull him in. He strained against them, uselessly. He screamed.

The Doctor watched him passively, not doing anything to help him at all. Her Ergon was wrapping bandages around her, too, but she was making no effort to stop it. She seemed almost happy as the cloth slithered over her arms.

“You were right in one way,” she said. “We’re a positive and a negative. Two cursed stories combining, cancelling out. ‘Cause you know what happens when an electron and its opposite meet?”

The shell of the Ergon closed around her, snapping her in.

“They annihilate each other,” she said.

Her grin was sick, and nothing like the Doctor’s at all.

Omega was still fighting the bandages, but it was clearly a battle he was losing. Yaz watched in horror as cloth bound his hands and his feet. Around her the flowers were bursting into flame and the ground was shaking with its creator’s anger. And as she looked over to Omega’s face she saw as his will broke along with his world.

“You will pay for what you HAVE DONE TO MY WORLD!” he roared in the voice of his Ergon. “FOR HOW I HAVE SUFFERED! WHATEVER PAIN YOU HAVE FELT – IN YOUR THOUSAND LIFETIMES, IN EVEN MORE – IT WILL BE NOTHING NEXT TO THE WRATH OF THE MIGHTY OMEGA!”

There was only a screech in response as the Doctor’s bird flew into the air.

A lifetime ago, Yaz had called on the Doctor to save her from a terrible monster. But the monster had been the Doctor, and the Doctor had made it much worse. And now – because she’d tried to be saved – she was almost certainly going to die.

She ran fast through the crumbling fields, while there was still a universe left that she could run through.


	21. Chapter 21

The Doctor’s Ergon fizzed with orange energy that exploded as flame from its wings. Light in the shape of people was shooting towards Omega— men and women and children, more besides. The Doctor had been things that hadn’t been close to human. Yaz tried not to look too close as she ran below.

“It’s you who stole so much of this potential!” the Doctor was shouting at Omega. “Everything you are, it’s because of me!”

“ONLY MY SUFFERING!” roared Omega. “MY INCARCERATION!”

He gasped and winced, and when he next spoke it was with his own voice once again. But the rage of his Ergon was still audible under his words.

“Regeneration is nothing to be proud of,” Omega said. “You didn’t invent it; it was only a gift. All that makes you special is your body. I’ve always been a creature of the mind.”

Impossible things were happening around him as he spoke. His Ergon was totally still, motionless— yet somehow it was everywhere as well. Its sharp feathers pierced the air for what seemed like miles. They cut it in odd angles, wrong dimensions. Their sizes were weird, their motion was strange. Time and space unbounded and going wrong.

There was no use running from this, Yaz realised. The only way out was with the Doctor, however unlikely that seemed.

“There is only one electron, Child,” Omega said from a million places. “Did you know that? It’s a bit like you. Zipping around through all of time and space. An easy thing to do, when you cannot die. I do not need a TARDIS to be everywhere.”

“So?” said the Doctor in more voices than only her own. “You’re still all that you‘ll ever be. I’ve had so many faces. So many minds.”

Yaz tried not to look at the Doctor as she walked up as close as she dared. She could feel the heat of the Ergon’s feathers as they flickered under regeneration energy, hear the sizzle of its flesh as it burned away and reformed. The Doctor held on the Ergon’s chest might not be her Doctor, not anymore. She didn’t think she could bear to see what her friend had become.

“Doctor!” she shouted. “It’s me! Yaz!”

The Ergon turned and stared at her, and from the air Yaz heard a harsh voice speak.

“ _Doctor_ ,” it said. “Doctor Who? You have no idea what I really am. You know why I kept you close, Yaz? All of you. I thought I’d lost my family, long ago. But they were never really mine at all.”

The voice cracked.

“And neither were you,” it said.

Yaz flinched. She’d; known that the Doctor might hurt her. But not by that much, not ever. She’d become something rotten. Something wrong.

“You’re part of that race, Omega!” the Doctor was screaming. “They told me they loved me! That I was theirs!”

“Then you knew love, at least,” Omega. “There was something they did give something to you. But everything I had, they took away! I have only had loneliness, _forever._ ”

“So you don’t know what I’ve lost!” shouted the Doctor.

“And you don’t know how I’ve suffered!” said Omega. “You had all of time and space! Everything! Everywhere! And you compare yourself to me trapped in an abyss where there’s _nothing_ ”—

And soon there would be nothing left of Omega’s world, Yaz saw. The ground was collapsing around them, dissolving. And Yaz was dissolving too, she could feel that now: all her protons and electrons coming apart inside. It’d happen to the Doctor too, though she might not notice. Even she was only atoms in the end.

Both voices in the air had distorted beyond recognition. Yaz could no longer tell who was screaming what.

“You don’t understand true loss!” one shouted.

“You’ve no idea of pain!” the other replied.

“You’re everything I feared you were!”

“You’re everything I hoped you weren’t.”

“The Time Lords were right to torture you.”

“They would have been nothing without me! I’m the one who they really betrayed.”

“It’s true. Without you there’d have been no Time Lords at all. And I’d be dead, not going on forever. I could finally rest”—

It would go on until the Doctor died, Yaz knew, until Omega’s world evaporated to nothing. And she’d die with her friend, when the time came. She’d be evaporating too.

She thought of the virus then, though it was stupidly. How it showed you how small you really were. Everyone was, every human: sometimes there was nothing that anyone could do. All you could do was pray, when all other options were gone. You could only wish that everything could be normal again.

When you were that desperate, a part of you might believe you could will things to change. If you wanted them enough; if you screwed your eyes up so tightly. But the world didn’t work in that way—

—but then Yaz wasn’t in the real world; not anymore.

So she tried, because she’d run out of anything else she could do. She called for whoever you asked for when the Doctor had broken down. Anyone who was left that could hear her now.

Nothing happened, of course. There was only the scream of the birds.

Yaz looked up at them, finally losing hope—

—while below it all, unseen by either Ergon, an old and angular Police Box faded into view. 

The Doctor was up there already. But there were other Doctors out there, impossibly many. Perhaps one was always ready to answer the call.

The door opened a crack, and out it came…

...a cloth figure in yellowed rags, a question mark scratched on its bandaged form.

 _“What is this? What is this? What is this?”_ it hissed.

 _It’s not what I wanted_ , thought Yaz. _It’s not what I wanted at all._


	22. Chapter 22

The cloth-bound figure hissed at Yaz, its metal claws outstretched. And as it did Yaz felt the fight going out of her, her body now telling her it was time to just give up and die. Claws might not be the worst way to go, after all. They might be less painful than dissolving to nothing at all.

The figure wasn’t killing her, though. It didn’t even seem to be trying. It just kept repeating the same phrase over and over, its voice harsh below the scream of the birds.

 _“What is this? What is this? What is this?”_ it cried, gesturing to its torso with its claws. Was it indicating itself, or the question mark on its chest? It was hard to tell.

Yaz decided to humour it; answer its question. It was an Ergon; the Doctor’s before it hatched. But the Doctor had said a creature like it once went by another name. She’d had a cloth man like this before, and her friends had called it a _Watcher_. And it would appear when you knew you were in danger, when you wanted above anything to survive—

Maybe it was just her imagination, but as she thought that she felt the figure was staring straight at her.

 _“What is this? What is this? What is this?”_ it screeched.

It paused.

_“And what are you?”_

Yaz stared at it, trying not to sound scared.

“I’m… I’m a person,” she said. “A human. The Doctor’s friend?”

The figure looked disapproving as Yaz felt an odd pain in her legs.

“I’m usually made out of matter?” she said, desperately.

The cloth man’s voice grew even louder and angrier.

 _“What is this?”_ it cried. _“What are you? What is this? What are you?”_

Despite everything, Yaz felt herself getting frustrated. This wasn’t how you spoke to people. Not in real life. It was like some stupid children’s story where some creature would set them a puzzle. Or a mystery story on TV where they all had to solve it at the end—

She froze.

They didn’t _all_ solve it, though? Did they?

_“What are you?”_

Yaz was a police officer. An investigator. And a great big question mark—

_“What is this?”_

—was a clue.

“Oh, _come on_ ,” she said, exasperated.

But another part of her had switched on, was whirring into gear. _Put it together_ , it said. _So this is a case, just like any other._

She knew what they’d said before their first time out on duty. They’d be in places they wouldn’t believe, see things you never did on TV. So what if she didn’t expect to have to do police work out here? No wonder they put you on paperwork if you weren’t able to deal with the unexpected.

_“What is this? What is this? What is this?”_

It was the Doctor’s Ergon before it had broken free—

 _Establish the facts,_ said the voice in her head. _Eliminate what you’d assumed._

She’d never actually seen it hatch. Had she? She’d seen the Watcher and the Doctor’s bird, assumed they were one and the same. But what if they weren’t? The Doctor had said her Watcher had come to Yaz because of the bond between them. But what if she’d been wrong?

What if the Watcher had never actually belonged to the Doctor at all?

_“What is this?”_

Because she hadn’t called for the Doctor, before it came here. She’d wished for anyone who might be able to save her—

_“What are you?”_

—Yaz stuff, Doctor stuff. There had to be a line. But the Doctor had said that, and she’d been making up rules all along—

_What was the point of a Police Box if you never got to do any policing?_

—the Doctor was older than she’d known, but the box was even older than the Doctor—

“That’s your problem,” Omega was shouting up above her. “You always think that everything’s about you!”

Yaz looked right at the Watcher.

Her Watcher.

And she took a very deep breath.

“Yasmin Khan,” she said. “You are under arrest for breaking into the Sheffield Headquarters of Hallamshire police.”

The Watcher looked back at her, impassively.

“You do not have to say anything,” she went on. “But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Including _‘What is this?’_ ” she added, unprofessionally.

For a moment the Watcher stared, saying nothing at all.

And then it spoke in her voice, as Yaz. Not the voice she heard in her head— the one on tape recorders and videos, which always made her cringe. But it was still different to that as well, very slightly. It was confident. It seemed assured.

“I had a right to be there,” Yaz heard that other her say. “I was undercover. Helping an officer in need.”

And under the cloth that covered her face, she could see as she started to smile—

—and then the bandages were a mummy unraveling, falling away to reveal the Yaz underneath. But this Yaz looked taller than she did. Happier. More confident. Yaz was the kind of person who’d always cringe when she saw herself in photos. She knew she never would if she was able to hold herself like that.

She was in full uniform, as well. A police officer with a police box, ready to save the day. There’d been someone out there who was able to help her, after all. Herself. But she’d had to be ready.

The Ergons had noticed what was happening below them, now, and so had the two people who were bound to them. The appearance of the other Yaz had seemed to shock the Doctor and Omega out of their anger. Fleetingly, they were able to be themselves again.

“Yaz,” said the Doctor through a wince of awful pain. “It’s me; really me. But I won’t be able to hold off the rage for long. That other you is a Watcher; same as mine. When you want it enough, they’re the person you’re going to be.”

“I’m not her!” said Yaz. “She looks like she knows what she’s doing. I wasn’t even needed in the lockdown! I was on paperwork.”

“Maybe,” said the Doctor, frowning. “I thought it was impossible for a human to summon an Ergon”—

Omega now spoke as well, real strain audible in his voice.

“And once it was impossible for someone to discover time travel,” he said. “Many things can never happen, until they do.”

“Yaz isn’t the sort of person who does that,” said the Doctor.

“Then maybe it’s past the time you allow her to be,” said Omega.

The Doctor looked shocked at that, and for a second Yaz feared she’d be lost to her fury again. But instead she was quiet, silent. From the ground Yaz saw her give a very slight nod.

“The things we hold inside,” the Doctor said to her. “What we’re holding back. They’re not the worst of us, not always. Your Ergon’s not a monster same as ours. That woman there, Yaz, she _is_ already you. You just need to go to her. To allow her to be.”

Yaz laughed, and looked over to the other her. She was everything she’d always dreamed of being. But to live your life as your dream? Even after travelling in time and space, that seemed uncomfortable.

“Will it hurt?” she said. “Becoming her?”

The Doctor looked uncomfortable.

“Yes,” she said, and it was the first time Yaz knew for sure that she’d been honest.

Something flashed across the Doctor’s face, and she was lost. Her and Omega were screaming at each other again, once again swallowed by rage. But that was okay, perhaps. Maybe they’d both done enough.

Yaz looked over at the other her, who smiled back.

 _You’re an authority figure when they see you,_ she remembered the lecture saying. _They see the badge; the uniform. At first, it’ll feel like pretending. But you have to play pretend before it’s real._

Maybe the Doctor had felt like this, a long, long time ago. When she was the first of her. The first time she saved a world.

Yaz walked over to her Watcher, and held out her hand—

—and lost focus, though only for a second. But when she recovered she was in her uniform, could feel her whole posture as different and could see what she now had to do. And the Doctor had been wrong, because none of it had hurt at all.

It would be wrong to say that she’d made a choice. It had taken her a long time, to get to the place this was possible. But now it was, and now she let it be true. Now she became the person she wanted to be.

“Right,” she said to Omega and the Doctor. “Get down here.”

She glared at them.

“Both of you,” she said. “You’re coming with me.”


	23. Chapter 23

“Why should we come with you?” said the Doctor with contempt. “Don’t you see what we are? We both shaped a universe in our image. You should revere us as gods!”

Her Ergon was roaring and Omega’s was, too. Both of them were flapping furiously overhead. But now Yaz saw she could speak over them. She’d be able to own the conversation.

 _Feel your authority,_ the Watcher inside her was saying. _When you do it right, you’ll know that it’s you in control._

“You aren’t gods,” said Yaz. “You’re only people, same as me. Maybe you’re smarter or do some amazing things. None of that means you’re above the law. I’ve met loads of lads back in Sheffield who thought they were, too.You’re both no different. Not really.”

The sharp and angular Ergon roared in rage.

“There are no laws!” Omega said. “The Time Lords”—

“The Time Lords are dead,” said Yaz. “There’s nothing coming back to replace their rule. There’s only the laws that we all make, together.”

The Ergon like fire cried in a million screams.

“Do you know what’s been done in the name of your laws?” said the Doctor. “The atrocities?”

“I’ve seen enough, yeah,” said Yaz. “I know what humanity’s like. Our laws are a long way from perfect. But they’re all we have.”

Omega laughed.

“The laws you made are just like those of my people,” he said. “Arbitrary. They are not written into the world”—

“Of course they aren’t!” said Yaz, noticing she was assertive now. “You idiot. What, you think police all think justice just happens if we all stay at home in our beds? We know that it’s all on us. And we do it ‘cause we want to make sure things are better. That’s something that needs all of us, not one person. Not going on being alone.”

Above her she thought she saw the Ergons wobble, their wings start to strain. Like the weight of her words was finally pulling them down.

“I’ve seen how the police work up close,” she said. “I’m not naive. But I have seen justice done, and it’s better than this. Whatever you’re both doing now.”

Maybe no one had been kind to them, she suddenly realised. Maybe that’s why they’d both been so lonely, collapsing down into themselves.

“There is another way to do this,” she said. “You can both settle down, and stop. No charges, I’ll let you off free. God knows you’ve been punished enough.”

“I was punished with eternity,” Omega said.

Yaz shook her head.

“We don’t hold with that in the Sheffield Police,” she said. “If you’ve done your time for the crime, then that’s enough. We believe that people — anyone”—

“Can change”, said the Doctor, softly. Her voice was her own, and she didn’t sound angry at all.

The bandages binding her cracked, falling away. Heavily, she clonked down to the ground.

“Redemption?” said Omega slowly. “If that were true— then Sheffield would be greater than the Time Lords, after all…”

His bandages fell apart too, and he fell to the ground below. It had been parched and barren, but as he landed it looked fresh once more. Shoots of grass poked up from under him as he got onto his feet.

His Ergon was smaller without him. Weaker. Once again, it wasn’t a bird at all— it was the strange, cloaked figure Yaz had seen when she had first come to this place. Its robe was clean and sleek, with no more wings. Its mask was once more three twisted slits of contempt.

“YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE ME,” the figure said as it floated in the sky. 

“Yes,” said Omega as he looked up at the clearing sky. “I thought that once, as well.”

He smiled dreamily, without anger.

“It was strange that they called me _Omega_ ,” he said. “That symbol; it’s not about eternity. It signifies an ending”—

“I _AM_ YOU, OMEGA!” the figure roared. “YOU ARE YOUR RAGE!”

The ground was reforming and the flowers were blooming again. In the distance a castle was building up out of the ground.

“You are,” Omega said. “As everything here is me. When one is consumed by their rage, it can define them. Their anger is all that anyone else can see. But it is never all the only thing a person is.”

“YOU WERE THE ONLY TIME LORD WORTHY TO BEAR THAT TITLE. YOU WERE THE GREATEST OF THEM!”

“Perhaps I was a lot of things,” said Omega. “And perhaps it didn’t matter, not really. We’re all so small, after all.”

He laughed.

“When you put it beside something as big as a universe”—

—he waved to take in the world that was also himself—

—“Omega is nothing in the end,” he said.

The mask dropped empty to the ground below, smashing into fragments on the soil.

Omega was silent for a moment. His world was calm.

“That was easy,” he said in wonder. “Strange, isn’t it? When you’re trapped for a billion years. You hope that getting out of it might be hard.”

There was only silence.

“Doctor?” he said. “I was saying that beating it was easy”— 

He stopped talking as he turned round, finally seeing what the Doctor’s bird had become. She was looking at it with utter disgust and horror—

It was still a bit like a bird, if you could call it that. But far too tall and bony. Unconvincing. Like a plucked chicken, or an emu that had seen better days. You’d have laughed at it before you ever thought it could be scary. It stood on the ground before her, too lanky to move.

“It’s an Ergon,” said Omega. “Like the one I had before.”

The Doctor looked at the ground, too embarrassed to speak.

“My desire, my will,” she said. “My me. Yeah. It’s that.”

She sighed.

“Beneath our rage is... shame,” she said. “Of what we are inside. What we’re hiding. The monster I’m most scared of, it’s always been that. Because it’s ridiculous.”

She looked up, tears now in her eyes.

“And it’s me,” she said.


	24. Chapter 24

“It’s a featherless biped,” said the Doctor as she stared at her Ergon. “It just looks like an idiot in a costume. Maybe someone somewhere thought it was scary, once.”

“I love it”, she said, flatly.

“It’s you,” said Yaz.

“I know,” said the Doctor. “That’s why I didn’t sound convinced.”

She was looking at the Ergon oddly, staring into it like a mirror.

“I’m pathetic,” she said.

“You’re not pathetic,” said Yaz. “You’re brilliant. And you said I was the best human ever, remember? So I’d definitely know what I’m talking about.”

“I’ve let you down, though,” said the Doctor. “I… I’ve kept things from you. What I was inside, what I knew. What I really am.”

Yaz looked over to the Ergon, standing there like a corpse that couldn’t die.

“Do you want me to hug it?” she said, hoping the answer was no.

“I don’t know what I want any more,” said the Doctor.

“I knew about the virus,” she added. “I’ve always known.”

Yaz laughed.

“Yeah, well,” she said. “I’d figured that might be the case. We all sort of did.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened.

“Come on,” said Yaz, smiling. “We’re not daft, Doctor. What’s the first thing you’d wonder when you stepped into a time machine? Especially with everything that’s been going on. What happens next; do we survive? It should’ve tipped you off that we never asked. We were afraid to. ‘Cause we saw you never said.”

The Doctor laughed softly.

“I didn’t want you to break,” she said. “You were all so pure, and kind. I always thought I needed to be strong. For all of you. Especially now.”

Yaz gulped.

“But this is the strongest I’ve ever seen you,” she said. “You’re not holding back. Being you.”

“Me?!” laughed the Doctor, pointing to the Ergon. “ _That’s_ me! Right there!”

“Yeah?” said Yaz. “Well, we still love you anyway. You big, daft… thing. I’ve seen a lot of sides of you while we’ve been here. I’m still here, aren’t I? ‘Cause I care about you. It’s what friends do.”

The Doctor didn’t respond for a while.

“Thank you,” she said, eventually.

“Here,” said Yaz, shuffling in her pockets. “There’s something I want to give you. It’ll be in the uniform, I’m sure of it. Always have it with me when I’m on duty.”

She fished something out of her breast pocket and pushed it into the Doctor’s palm.

“I used to be where you are now,” Yaz said. “Trying to be strong. Pretending on the outside that everything was okay, though anyone could see it wasn’t really. But strength… you repay it, right? None of us can be strong all the time. But that’s okay, ‘cause we get to be strong for each other. So someone’ll be there for you, when you need it. And when the time’s right, you get to pass it on.”

The Doctor looked down at her palm and the fifty-pence piece held inside.

“Pay it forward,” said Yaz, smiling. “Well, I know you will. With interest. But not right now, yeah? Right now you let it be yours.”

The Doctor was totally silent once again.

“Yaz,” she said after some time. “What I said up there. About you not being my family.”

“You don’t have to apologise,” said Yaz.

“No,” said the Doctor. “That’s not it. Families can hurt you. Betray you. They can… keep secrets, without you even knowing. So you’re not my family. It’s true.”

“You’re my friend,” she said.

And then she’d run into Yaz’s arms and was hugging her far too tightly, so tight Yaz felt like her lungs had gone wrong. And then the Doctor was crying, sobbing louder than you’d think a person could, and it was like something that had been struggling for a long, long time had finally been allowed to let go.

Yaz hugged her back, knowing not to speak.

From behind her friend’s shoulders, she noticed the Ergon had gone.


	25. Chapter 25

The three of them stood by the police box in a universe that had fully healed. It was the Doctor’s TARDIS, after all: somehow Yaz’s Watcher had pulled it through. It was cool and sleek, mysterious against the world. Ready to take them somewhere strange and new.

“I came here to ask for your help,” the Doctor said to Omega. “And you did give it to me. Not quite in the way I’d hoped, but”—

“You’ve helped me, too,” said Omega. “However improbable that seemed an hour ago.”

“She’s all about improbable, that Doctor,” said Yaz.

“I’m not sure that I ever thanked you, Omega,” said the Doctor, looking out at the world. “For trying to save me, all those years ago. You suffered so much for it. And I thought you were a villain.”

Omega nodded.

“Thank you,” he said. “It is a long time since I have been shown kindness.”

“Then you’ve got lots of catching up to do,” said the Doctor.

“You didn’t need to thank me,” Omega said. “That’s not why I did what I did. I tried to save you because deep down I knew it was right. Good isn’t good if you’re doing it for the reward.”

The Doctor looked slightly shocked at that. She hesitated, weighing something up.

“You know,” she said. “I wish you could come with us.”

“Oh, good,” said Omega. “I was worried I’d have to ask. And that wouldn’t be very polite, would it? Good isn’t done for the reward, but when a reward comes along, well”—

He grinned.

“It’s not possible,” said the Doctor. “You’ve been down here too long. Out there in a universe of matter? You’d explode. And you can’t die, of course, so you’d reform again. Then explode. I don’t think it sounds very fun.”

“There’s nothing for it, then,” said Omega. “We’ll have to go somewhere that isn’t the universe. It’s what I wanted anyway. I’ve been trapped here for so long. All of time and space?” He shook his head. “It isn’t enough.”

He stepped into the TARDIS with a strange smile over his face.

“I’ve no idea what he meant by that,” the Doctor said to Yaz. “Really.”

She shuffled awkwardly. She’d always find emotions difficult in this form. But that was okay. She just was who she was, till the day she’d be someone else again.

“Yaz,” she said. “I was going to say. You don’t have to come.”

“I want to!” said Yaz. “Wherever it is that we’re going.”

“I’m done holding back from you,” said the Doctor. “Dark times are coming to your world. What’s coming, it’ll need brilliant people. All the Yazes a planet can get.”

Yaz nodded.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Maybe I was afraid to think it. But if there’s going to be a lot of hard stuff in the future, then”—

She shrugged.

“Means I need to make time for a bit of fun,” she said.

The Doctor grinned a big, stupid grin, the grin of a child who’d been given all of the sweets in the world.

“We’d best get started, then,” she said.

“Box?” she asked, pointing to the open doors.

“Box,” Yaz replied, absolutely affirmatively.

“Right!” said the Doctor. “Here goes! Off to see the”—

She stopped, and her grin had gone away.

“Ah,” she said. “He didn’t actually say where we’d be going.”


	26. Chapter 26

Omega was frowning when the two of them came through the TARDIS doors. Somehow he’d managed to make several parts of the console give out biscuits— except for the custard cream dispenser, which was leaking oil.

“Mind it, Omega!” said the Doctor. “This TARDIS isn’t yours. You can’t go messing with all the buttons and stuff. You’ll give the poor thing a headache. And it’s the worst kind of headache, probably, when you’ve not even got yourself a head”—

“You’ve not said where we were going,” she added as she remembered.

“Well, we’re not going anywhere at all, if you don’t show me round the controls,” said Omega. “Most of it’s pretty basic, as far as I can see. But tell me. How does this ship go starboard?”

The Doctor frowned.

“Starboard?” she said.

“Waterwise!” cried Omega, as though that explained it. “To the sea beyond the stars. Behind the firmament, or beyond it.”

The Doctor made the sort of confused face Yaz was pretty used to doing.

“You mean to say you didn’t _know?_ ” said Omega. “That no one ever discovered…”

He laughed, shaking his head.

“The Time Lords,” he said. “They really weren’t anything, without the two of us!”

“Do I have you right?” asked Yaz. “There’s an ocean _behind_ space?”

“Well, of course,” said Omega. “The darkest deep, where day and night were first divided. The sea where the waters rose from in the floods”—

Yaz’s eyes widened.

“Like Noah’s Flood?” she said. “The Doctor said that never happened!”

“What happens is only a subset of possibility,” Omega said with a twinkle in his eye. “Once you can travel through all of time and space, it doesn’t take much to enter something more. Even if this TARDIS was built by people who didn’t know that”—

He trailed off, frowning. He was pressing console buttons with one hand while poking a biscuit with the other.

“But it isn’t working,” he said. “I don’t know why.”

The Doctor was quiet, almost apologetic.

“I think I do,” she said.

She was looking up at the enormous crystal in the console, pulsing orange and dull. Her TARDIS was tiny and blue, unimposing. You’d have no idea what really lurked inside. How gloomy it really was. How offputting. Yaz had figured out what that was about, a very long time ago now.

“I was thinking about what you said, about the void,” the Doctor said to Omega. “And you’re right. There’s so much darkness out there. More than a human mind could ever see. So much of it that if you stopped being careful—

She smiled, and pressed her hand against the console.

—”you might forget that you can see the sky,” she said.

The orange light was already brightening as she closed her eyes. Like a dawn was breaking, like a sunrise. By the time the Doctor had opened them again, the console’s crystal was as pale and as blue as her coat.

“Now we can go,” she said.

Omega flipped a switch and the TARDIS wheezed and moaned—

—and slowly the wheezing turned into a different noise. A long, low bass, inhaling and exhaling. The sound of a giant slowly beginning to breathe. It made the floor vibrate along with their bones. The ship was humming, and it felt like the world was as well.

“You know something,” said Omega under the sound. “I think I’m happy. I’m actually happy! I’ve no idea how long it’s been.”

“Well, you’re a free man now,” laughed the Doctor. “Omega Free! Like the fatty acid. And also good for you”—

“You don’t have to explain your jokes all the time,” said Omega.” I am a genius, in case you’ve already forgotten.”

Doctor looks at him, mock affronted.

“Cheeky,” she said. “Y’know, I think I might’ve preferred you when you were evil.”

This was how it was going to be with the pair of them, Yaz realised. Bickering like old ladies on the bus. It’d drive her mad, and she wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world.

She smiled, and decided not to say anything. But now, she knew she really was making a choice.

The sound of crashing waves echoed around them. They were at the threshold of the sea beyond all things.

“It’s time,” said the Doctor. “The three of us; we’ve been cooped up in our universes for far too long. Today is the day that isolation ends. And we’re going—

—the breath of the TARDIS roared—

—”where we’ve always wanted to go”—

—the sound of the waves broke and boomed—

—“outside,” she said.

Then something impossible happened, and they were gone.


	27. Chapter 27

The Time Lords were dead, though the people of Earth didn’t know it. But maybe they’d sensed that something had changed in the world. That days were too long, that time was now passing in lumps. March had too many days, and nobody knew what to do. Everyone knew that the universe wasn’t the same.

And if you had told someone then of the death of the Time Lords, they might have thought more about what had gone strange in their days. How it felt like the future had changed from what it was before. How things from the past seemed to be in the present now, too. How the world had come to be like a movie, while also still being the world. And it might have made them feel better, to know something had changed in the universe. And it might have made them feel worse, to know things wouldn’t go back as they were.

It was a strange time for that planet, and a scary one. But fear was not the only thing they had. Because they might have been scared, or shy, or angry. They might have so much that was hidden away. And they might had to stay apart from each other people, for longer than they’d prayed they would. But all the same, they did have each other. And maybe each other would turn out to be enough.

The world is capable of the most incredible change, and sometimes change is scary. Reality bends and certainties fall away; everything we thought was true becomes a lie. When everything changes, nobody can face it alone. But nobody has to, however amazing they are.

Beyond the most distant stretches of the universe, three friends were bursting into something new…

Because something ancient was passing away.

And something unbelievable was beginning.


End file.
